Energy and load management in automation systems - Requirements for future systems

The increasing integration of renewable sources of energy comes at a cost, in particular regarding the stability of power supplies. This leads to the requirement to reduce and to flexibilise power consumption. This paper describes how automation systems may help to fulfil future requirements as central components of production systems. After a review of the state of the art in energy and load management in automation systems, possible developments are considered. In order to derive a future research direction with respect to an optimized energy and load management, four building blocks are defined to describe future requirements for energy and load management.