Digital twin for decision support system of industrial utility management

Manufacturing and industrial operations rely heavily on energy that is generated mostly from fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas, which harm the environment and contribute to climate change. Thus, renewable energy is being integrated into industrial processes to lessen environmental effects and reduce fossil fuel usage. However, the renewable source performance process can be greatly affected by disturbances and constraints, such as ambient air temperature and relative humidity, minimum utility consumption, and the total energy required, making effective control difficult. This study proposes a digital twin built with machine learning regression techniques for load demand forecasting as a decision-support system for industrial utility management. From the results, the ensemble tree (ET) model produced the highest accuracy, based on validation and test dataset root mean squared error values of 23.164 and 27.558, respectively, and R2 values of 0.96 and 0.95, respectively. The digital twin and load demand forecasting approaches effectively created an efficient operating schedule for industrial utility management. The ET model had a total error of 23.86%, substantially lower than the average load demand's total error of 65.29%. Therefore, the ET model with weather conditions in four scenarios could be recommended to optimize energy utilization when creating the operating schedule.