scholarly journals Sustainable Scheduling of Material Handling Activities in Labor-Intensive Warehouses: A Decision and Control Model

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 3111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raffaele Carli ◽  
Mariagrazia Dotoli ◽  
Salvatore Digiesi ◽  
Francesco Facchini ◽  
Giorgio Mossa
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Material Handling ◽  
Optimal Schedule ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Continuous Increase ◽  
Penalty Cost ◽  
Electricity Cost ◽  
Cost Of Energy ◽  
The Cost ◽  
And Control

In recent years, the continuous increase of greenhouse gas emissions has led many companies to investigate the activities that have the greatest impact on the environment. Recent studies estimate that around 10% of worldwide CO2 emissions derive from logistical supply chains. The considerable amount of energy required for heating, cooling, and lighting as well as material handling equipment (MHE) in warehouses represents about 20% of the overall logistical costs. The reduction of warehouses’ energy consumption would thus lead to a significant benefit from an environmental point of view. In this context, sustainable strategies allowing the minimization of the cost of energy consumption due to MHE represent a new challenge in warehouse management. Consistent with this purpose, a two-step optimization model based on integer programming is developed in this paper to automatically identify an optimal schedule of the material handling activities of electric mobile MHEs (MMHEs) (i.e., forklifts) in labor-intensive warehouses from profit and sustainability perspectives. The resulting scheduling aims at minimizing the total cost, which is the sum of the penalty cost related to the makespan of the material handling activities and the total electricity cost of charging batteries. The approach ensures that jobs are executed in accordance with priority queuing and that the completion time of battery recharging is minimized. Realistic numerical experiments are conducted to evaluate the effects of integrating the scheduling of electric loads into the scheduling of material handling operations. The obtained results show the effectiveness of the model in identifying the optimal battery-charging schedule for a fleet of electric MMHEs from economic and environmental perspectives simultaneously.

A Big Data Application for Energy Consumption Management of Commercial Buildings

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 0-0
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Data Streams ◽  
Design And Implementation ◽  
Available Energy ◽  
Cost Of Energy ◽  
Data Application ◽  
Consumption Data ◽  
Big Data Application ◽  
The Cost

The demand for energy is increasing rapidly and, after a few years, it may surpass the available energy, which may lead the energy providers to increase the cost of energy consumption to compensate the cost for the production. This paper provides design and implementation details of a prototype big data application developed to help large buildings to automatically manage their energy consumption by setting energy consumption targets, collecting periodic energy consumption data, storing the data streams, displaying the energy consumption graphically in real-time, analyzing the consumption patterns, and generating energy consumption graphs and reports. The application is connected to Mongo NoSQL backend database to handle the large and continuously changing data. This big data energy consumption management system is expected to help the users in managing energy consumption by analyzing the patterns to see if it is within or above the desired consumption targets and displaying the data graphically.

Business Development and Environmental Impact in the Solar (PV) Field

2017 ◽  
pp. 44-84
Keyword(s):  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Financial Incentives ◽  
Investment Decision ◽  
Business Environment ◽  
Business Development ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Pv System ◽  
Investment Projects ◽  
Electricity Cost ◽  
The Cost

The techno-economic analysis of a PV system is designed to measure the viability of the designed system from an economical and technological point of view assuming some specific environmental conditions. In this research, for the techno-economic analysis of PV system the authors are focused on four general categories of factors which are highly influential on the investment decision in this field. These are the PV system costs, the electricity cost, the sunlight and other environmental characteristics and the financial incentives. Each of this factors is analyzed in order to understand and evaluate the general conditions that influence the decision in the photovoltaic business. The methodology that is used for explaining the real business environment in PV field and the main indicators that can estimate the investment profitability is the case study related to formal opportunities for developing PV investment projects in Romania. The investors in PV field have to understand the life cycle of a PV system that can give an overlook of the cost reduction opportunities and also make them sensible to the decommissioning phase of such an investment. For future investments in the PV field in Europe the authors identified and analyzed the main factors that characterize the PV business development in the next period.

scholarly journals Economic Study of Solar Chimney Power-Water Distillation Plant (SCPWDP)

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 2789 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emad Abdelsalam ◽  
Feras Kafiah ◽  
Malek Alkasrawi ◽  
Ismael Al-Hinti ◽  
Ahmad Azzam
Keyword(s):  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Economic Feasibility ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Economic Study ◽  
Solar Chimney ◽  
Water Distillation ◽  
Cost Of Energy ◽  
Marginal Improvement ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Distillation Plant

This work provides technical and economic feasibility of installing a solar chimney power-water distillation plant (SCPWDP) in the port of Aqaba in Jordan. A mathematical model for the SCPWDP has been developed and validated. A full year of weather conditions data has been processed, where water and electricity productions have been estimated. The results show that the SCPWDP can produce 481,440 kWh of electricity and 123,753 ton of distilled water yearly simultaneously. The economic analysis shows that the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for the SCPWDP is $1.86/kWh. The cost estimate seems reasonable once compared with other studies. However, from economical point of view the LCOE of SCPWDP requires a further decrease in order to make it economically feasible. The sensitivity analysis shows that increasing the chimney height of the SCPWDP would increase the production of electricity, and hence, decreases the LCOE. However, increasing the chimney height would have a marginal improvement since it increases both capital and operation expenditures.

scholarly journals An Energy Conserving and Transmission Radius Adaptive Scheme to Optimize Performance of Energy Harvesting Sensor Networks

Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (9) ◽  
pp. 2885 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Ju ◽  
Wei Liu ◽  
Chengyuan Zhang ◽  
Anfeng Liu ◽  
Tian Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Sensor Networks ◽  
Energy Harvesting ◽  
Network Performance ◽  
Maximum Energy ◽  
Energy Utilization ◽  
Utilization Rate ◽  
Cost Of Energy ◽  
Energy Conserving ◽  
The Cost

In energy harvesting wireless sensor networks (EHWSNs), the energy tension of the network can be relieved by obtaining the energy from the surrounding environment, but the cost on hardware cannot be ignored. Therefore, how to minimize the cost of energy harvesting hardware to reduce the network deployment cost, and further optimize the network performance, is still a challenging issue in EHWSNs. In this paper, an energy conserving and transmission radius adaptive (ECTRA) scheme is proposed to reduce the cost and optimize the performance of solar-based EHWSNs. There are two main innovations of the ECTRA scheme. Firstly, an energy conserving approach is proposed to conserve energy and avoid outage for the nodes in hotspots, which are the bottleneck of the whole network. The novelty of this scheme is adaptively rotating the transmission radius. In this way, the nodes with maximum energy consumption are rotated, balancing energy consumption between nodes and reducing the maximum energy consumption in the network. Therefore, the battery storage capacity of nodes and the cost on hardware. Secondly, the ECTRA scheme selects a larger transmission radius for rotation when the node can absorb enough energy from the surroundings. The advantages of using this method are: (a) reducing the energy consumption of nodes in near-sink areas, thereby reducing the maximum energy consumption and allowing the node of the hotspot area to conserve energy, in order to prevent the node from outage. Hence, the network deployment costs can be further reduced; (b) reducing the network delay. When a larger transmission radius is used to transmit data in the network, fewer hops are needed by data packet to the sink. After the theoretical analyses, the results show the following advantages compared with traditional method. Firstly, the ECTRA scheme can effectively reduce deployment costs by 29.58% without effecting the network performance as shown in experiment analysis; Secondly, the ECTRA scheme can effectively reduce network data transmission delay by 44–71%; Thirdly, the ECTRA scheme shows a better balance in energy consumption and the maximum energy consumption is reduced by 27.89%; And lastly, the energy utilization rate is effectively improved by 30.09–55.48%.

The Energy Involved in Producing Engineering Materials

1976 ◽  
Vol 190 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Barnes
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Engineering Industry ◽  
Waste Products ◽  
Shaping Process ◽  
End Products ◽  
Considerable Impact ◽  
Engineering Materials ◽  
The Cost

Energy is needed to convert minerals into the basic materials which are used in the engineering industry and then to form them into end products. It is in the conversion that most of the energy is normally consumed, and increases in the costs of energy influence the relative costs of these materials. The energy needed to form the materials into the various end products is normally small in comparison and, even from an energy conservation point of view, it is more important to employ forming methods which use the minimum amount of material than to choose methods which inherently use less energy. The ability to recycle with low energy consumption the material which is discarded during the forming or shaping process is important and improved recycling could have considerable impact upon the overall energy consumption. Whereas the overall energy consumption is important, it is the cost of the raw materials themselves and the total cost of the process to the finished product (offset by any return on waste products) which determines the relative cost of each of the various engineering materials. The united Kingdom energy situation and its effect on the relative positions of these materials is discussed.

scholarly journals COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE ENERGY CONSUMPTION OF FIXED AND VARIABLE SPEED PRESSURE SYSTEMS

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 363
Author(s):  
Ana Catarina Formigoni Abel ◽  
Diego Antônio Custódio
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Energy Savings ◽  
Electric Energy ◽  
Variable Speed ◽  
Electric Energy Consumption ◽  
Cost Of Energy ◽  
Product Models ◽  
Average Potential Energy ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Frequency Inverter

The objective of this study was analyzing two pressure systems relative to energy consumption. One of the systems operates at a fixed speed and the other with variable speed by using a frequency inverter. It was selected two product models based on the water demand, which was calculated with the average flow rate spent per each type of sanitary appliance. Thus, it was possible to estimate the power consumed in each hour and then, calculate the electric energy consumption. The cost of energy per hour was also found, considering the current energy tariff. The results showed an economical use of the inverter compares to non-use. The average potential energy savings was 44.7%, and it was found R$ 369.11 of reduction in the monthly energy cost. Therefore, it is concluded the use frequency inverter is economically viable in relation to energy consumption and reduce the costs of electric energy.  

Business Development and Environmental Impact in the Solar (PV) Field

2021 ◽  
pp. 1475-1504
Author(s):  
Adrian Tantau ◽  
Robert Staiger
Keyword(s):  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Financial Incentives ◽  
Investment Decision ◽  
Business Environment ◽  
Business Development ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Pv System ◽  
Investment Projects ◽  
Electricity Cost ◽  
The Cost

The techno-economic analysis of a PV system is designed to measure the viability of the designed system from an economical and technological point of view assuming some specific environmental conditions. In this research, for the techno-economic analysis of PV system the authors are focused on four general categories of factors which are highly influential on the investment decision in this field. These are the PV system costs, the electricity cost, the sunlight and other environmental characteristics and the financial incentives. Each of this factors is analyzed in order to understand and evaluate the general conditions that influence the decision in the photovoltaic business. The methodology that is used for explaining the real business environment in PV field and the main indicators that can estimate the investment profitability is the case study related to formal opportunities for developing PV investment projects in Romania. The investors in PV field have to understand the life cycle of a PV system that can give an overlook of the cost reduction opportunities and also make them sensible to the decommissioning phase of such an investment. For future investments in the PV field in Europe the authors identified and analyzed the main factors that characterize the PV business development in the next period.

Object-Oriented Modeling of Industrial Manipulators With Application to Energy Optimal Trajectory Scaling

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcello Pellicciari ◽  
Giovanni Berselli ◽  
Francesco Leali ◽  
Alberto Vergnano ◽  
Bengt Lennartson
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Power Flow ◽  
Manufacturing Systems ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Mechatronic Systems ◽  
Serial Manipulators ◽  
Industrial Manipulators ◽  
Electromechanical Dynamics ◽  
And Control

The development of safe, energy efficient mechatronic systems is currently changing standard paradigms in the design and control of industrial manipulators. In particular, most optimization strategies require the improvement or the substitution of different system components. On the other hand, from an industry point of view, it would be desirable to develop energy saving methods applicable also to established manufacturing systems being liable of small possibilities for adjustments. Within this scenario, an engineering method is reported for optimizing the energy consumption of serial manipulators for a given operation. An object-oriented modeling technique, based on bond graph, is used to derive the robot electromechanical dynamics. The system power flow is then highlighted and parameterized as a function of the total execution times. Finally, a case study is reported showing the possibility to reduce the operation energy consumption when allowed by scheduling or manufacturing constraints.

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