Comparison of simulation-based and optimization-based energy flexible production planning

Due to an increasing use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power, electricity generation becomes more volatile depending largely on weather conditions. This leads to fluctuating energy costs and gives new opportunities for cost savings to industry. Thus new ways of energy-oriented production planning will be necessary, without violating production related goals. The scope of this paper is the comparison of simulation-based and optimization-based production planning. Both approaches are compared in a case study with real data from an energy-intensive production. Evaluation criteria, for example computational effort, quality of planning and acceptance, are used to measure their operational capability.