Efficient energy mapping for supporting green transition in industry

The process industry is facing the green transition from conventional to renewable energy sources. Executing it in a cost-effective manner will require increased energy efficiency, electrification, and clear overall strategy from the beginning. A prerequisite to strong strategy is an energy mapping which describes the energy use within an industrial facility, and often very expensive and time consuming. The primary goal of the proposed process mapping methodology is to effectively obtain production and energy data from industrial plants in a short time that can be analyzed to provide a generic, holistic, and flexible model. The model is a step to creating a software tool to generate energy flow mappings for industrial end users to make decisions with energy optimization in mind. In addition to the documentation of energy flows, the tool supports the continuous improvement of the energy mapping itself and the actual energy use. The required data is collected by reviewing existing specifications of production facilities, complemented with interviews with personnel working in the production lines as well as other on-site investigations. The information is then entered into the developed model with energy flow mapping as an output. The model's output can then be used to get an overview of the primary energy used and identify the future opportunities for energy optimization, electrification and decarbonization of industrial sites. A couple of industry use cases have been shown to successfully illustrate the performance of the model.