Greater transparency in energy consumption

If companies want to benefit from low electricity rates, they need reliable forecasts of their power consumption. Software for this is increasingly shifting to cloud-based solutions. To find the right software, a four-step selection process helps.

The more electricity comes from renewable energy sources, the more the electricity supply is subject to seasonal and weather-related fluctuations – and the price on the Leipzig Power Exchange rises or falls with them. Companies that want to profit from such price fluctuations must be able to estimate as accurately as possible how much electricity they will consume in the near future and utilize their production whenever the electricity price is low or even negative.

In the meantime, however, the market for software solutions that can monitor, forecast and control energy flows within manufacturing has become confusing. »For small and medium-sized companies in particular, which are often still inexperienced in the use of software solutions for energy-efficient production, it has therefore become difficult to locate the best service for them,« says Can Kaymakci from the Industrial Energy Systems department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA.

Four steps to the right software

The researcher has therefore developed a four-step selection procedure together with his colleague Philipp Pelger, with Professor Alexander Sauer, head of Fraunhofer IPA and the Institute for Energy Efficiency in Production (EEP) at the University of Stuttgart, and with Simon Wenninger from the Business Informatics Project Group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT, and tested it at a manufacturing company.

The selection procedure enables the efficient solution of complex selection problems and integrates the practical know-how of the researchers in the fields of energy as well as IT into the decision-making process for the identification of an optimal software solution for the described use case: In the first step, the researchers clarify the requirements together with the respective SME and thus also which evaluation criteria will be considered in the further selection procedure. The researchers then select those solutions that meet the requirements and evaluate, for example, their performance, user-friendliness, data security and costs. In the third step, these properties are weighed against each other, taking into account the company-specific requirements, and weighted accordingly. The end result is a clear presentation that shows which software is most suitable.

The procedure was used to select a cloud service provider for electrical load forecasting for an SME. Nevertheless, the selection procedure is also applicable for other software solutions, for example for monitoring energy flows or intelligent load management. Anyone who needs support in selecting suitable software solutions around energy efficiency and flexibility may contact Fraunhofer IPA.