Das Projekt "TOP-Energy - Toolkit for Optimization of Industrial Energy Systems" wird/wurde gefördert durch: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Industrieller Forschungsvereinigungen 'Otto-von-Guericke' e.V. / Verein zur Förderung der Energie- und Umwelttechnik. Es wird/wurde ausgeführt durch: Technische Hochschule Aachen, Fakultät Maschinenwesen, Institut für Thermodynamik, Lehrstuhl für Technische Thermodynamik.Rational energy use in industry decreases costs, environmental pollution and the depletion of resources. Since energy costs are often of the same magnitude as the profit, reduced energy use considerably affects the company results. Yet, systematic, profound analysis and optimization of energetic processes are seldom conducted. In order to reduce the effort and increase the quality of energy system analysis, a computer aided method is being developed in a research project called TOP-Energy (Toolkit for Optimisation of Industrial Energy Systems). The main aim of TOP-Energy is to support energy consultants in analysing and optimising industrial energy supply systems by providing modules for documentation, simulation and evaluation of energy systems with respect to energetic, economic and environmental aspects. To ensure an integrated workflow, TOP-Energy reflects a business process model derived from the German guideline, VDI 3922. TOP-Energy consists of two major parts, a unifying framework and a set of modules: The former supplies the services of a modern GUI-application such as module-sensitive dialogs and presentations, flow sheet editing and report generation. It includes a sophisticated, abstract data model and operates as a software bus for modules allowing them to integrate their own XML-based data. The latter are technical modules, addressing particular aspects of energy system analysis such as economic analysis or system simulation. An outstanding feature of TOP-Energy is the supply system simulator, called eSim, which can be tailored to the end users needs. It evaluates energy supply concepts by means of historical demand data. In contrast to other simulator packages, eSim supersedes the costly modelling of control systems at an early stage of concept development by automatic optimisation of component deployment.
