Renewable Energy Integration Into the Injection Molding Quotation Process. Design and Technologies for Polymeric and Composites Products

ABSTRACT Efficient energy management is a requirement for advanced factories, which require vast amounts of energy to operate and are often powered by a single grid connection with varying prices caused by fluctuations. These types of industrial consumers often choose to adopt local renewable energy generators. To assess the sustainability of such a grid connection, with fluctuations of the grid's energy mix and, respectively, the renewable energy generators, it is necessary to quantify the production and consumption, and determine the source's share of energy. Accurately estimating future production costs has gained an increased importance for the quotation process in a competitive environment where multiple suppliers compete with various cost optimizations even from the request‐for‐information (RFI) or request‐for‐quotations (RFQ) phases. As such, the development of an energy analyser software tool is proposed, which tracks energy sources, consumers, and costs, analysing the given timestamped data and estimating future energy mixes, providing insight into the power sources and their proportion of energy and the way they will impact the resulting cost of the part.