ESiP – Energy Storage in Production

Challenge

A common scenario in the day-to-day operations of a manufacturing plant: Parts are being machined on various milling and forming machines. The high-speed machining processes require highly dynamic movements of the machine components, which are made possible by countless acceleration and deceleration cycles of the drives. This results in significant power fluctuations with substantial power spikes. These, in turn, can damage electrical equipment. To prevent excessive strain, the electrical installation is often oversized, leading to losses under partial load conditions and incurring high costs for grid connection (grid fees). But it doesn’t have to be that way—if the designers of these machines had a user-friendly planning tool at their disposal that reliably identifies the appropriate storage technology, calculates a sensible storage size, and develops recommendations for operation. Today, the design of energy supply and distribution is usually determined using a spreadsheet and generously rounded up to account for uncertainties. The result is often oversized components. Many plant managers forego energy storage entirely due to acquisition costs. This is a mistake, as the scale of valuable energy that remains unused is often completely underestimated.

A survey of machine and plant manufacturers revealed that further research is needed to optimize base load and reduce peak loads. Different application scenarios and machine types must be considered in order to achieve machine-optimized design through appropriate algorithms, as well as to design energy storage systems optimally and utilize them to the fullest extent possible. The most suitable energy storage technology for each application should also be taken into account.

Approach

This issue is being addressed by the project “Energy Storage in Production” (ESiP), funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and coordinated by Fraunhofer IWU. The central focus of research and development is the creation of a tool to design energy storage systems across different technologies for machines and systems in industrial production. The customized, user-friendly software tool will take all common energy storage technologies into account. To achieve this goal, the project partners’ practical expertise in the fields of energy storage technology and power electronics is being combined with the requirements of production engineering. 

The Fraunhofer IWU models a wide range of application scenarios for ESiP, covering a broad spectrum of machines and systems. Based on these scenarios and the specific characteristics of the energy storage systems, suitable design algorithms are developed. The research addresses the question of which electrical energy storage technology offers the greatest technical and economic benefits for the respective application. To this end, various integration levels (e.g., component, machine, production area) are examined, and different configurations of the energy storage systems are considered. Operational management is also of crucial importance for efficient use in production. It is important to consider both factors from the perspective of the energy storage system (such as system efficiency, aging, or temperature) and production-related factors (such as technology parameters, production orders, or load limits).

The partners will test and validate all project results using a real-world demonstrator.