Optimization of Greenhouse Production Process: An Investigation of Energy Efficiency Potentials

Abstract

Political focus has in recent years focused on climate and energy efficiency as part of the global goals of a fossil-free future. The introduction of the term industry 4.0, the fourth industrial revolution, provides a solution. Industry 4.0 seeks to combine the real and virtual space to achieve maximum efficiency and autonomy. This paper aims to investigate the energy efficiency potentials in the industrial production processes with a case study of a large commercial greenhouse grower in Denmark. The discrete event simulation software- Arena is used in this study for performing the simulations of the greenhouse production. The simulation results in the total yearly electricity consumption of 1,970.83 MWh. This paper finds that there is not big energy efficiency potential in the greenhouse production process without response to the hourly electricity price signals, and the results indicate a bottleneck at the transportation from the arrival and cutting station.