Energy Efficiency Together

Saving energy is more important than ever, both in our everyday lives and in industry. In this sector, reducing energy and resource consumption is becoming increasingly important, particularly given the sharp rise in energy prices and the increased focus on sustainability. So, how can artificial intelligence (AI) help reduce energy consumption? There is enormous potential here, particularly in production. However, processes are often complex and distributed across many different areas, which makes effective use of AI challenging. Wouldn’t it be more efficient for companies to collaborate on solutions instead of reinventing the wheel individually?

In the ReGaP (Reduce and Gain) project, funded by the DATIpilot (Promoting & Learning for Innovation and Transfer) programme of the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR), scientists in Hanover and Hildesheim are addressing this question. The goal is to establish an open innovation community that will jointly promote and make easily accessible methods, technologies, processes, practices, and favourable framework conditions for comprehensively more energy-efficient production.

Why joint innovation?

To be able to use AI for energy optimisation in production, a variety of technical and organisational issues must first be addressed. These include collecting suitable energy data and dealing with a variety of data formats. It also needs to be clarified how the AI will reach the machines (e.g. Edge). Finally, industry needs suitable AI models and practical solutions that can cope with numerous influencing factors, distributed production, disruptions and real-time requirements.

Individual companies quickly reach their limits. ReGaP is therefore focusing on collaboration, pooling knowledge, experience and technologies to develop better, more practical solutions. The plans include:

• research into new AI methods for energy optimisation;
• developing reusable modules for energy recording and optimisation;
• methods for precisely calculating energy consumption and CO₂ balances;
• testing in real production environments.

Industry 4.0 platform as the innovation core

The open source IIoT platform oktoflow (IIot: Industrial Internet of Things), which was developed in the predecessor project IIP-Ecosphere funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics, forms the innovation core for ReGaP’s open innovation process. An IIoT or Industry 4.0 platform is particularly suitable as an innovation core. It forms an abstracting layer for the multitude of connected devices, production machines, control units and data sources. The flexible and adaptive oktoflow platform therefore acts as a kind of intermediary and ensures that all these systems can communicate with each other without developers having to worry about the technical details. This makes it much easier to develop intelligent solutions for energy recording and optimisation.

Community to drive innovation

Activities are also planned for the transfer and development of the community. For example, special innovation scouts are actively approaching companies to record their experiences, requirements and ideas and integrate them into the open innovation process.

In addition to the management project led by the L3S Research Centre, several community projects are being developed under the ReGaP umbrella. The first of these, Platform Goes Energy, focuses on further developing the innovation core. Further projects will emerge from dialogue within the community and be put out to tender for funding.

Alongside L3S, the management project also involves the Institute of Production Engineering and Machine Tools (IFW) at Leibniz University Hannover, the University of Hildesheim, and, for community development, the business development agency Hannoverimpuls.

Joint innovation could be the key to making industrial production more energy-efficient and sustainable. This open approach benefits not only individual companies, but entire industries. The results feed directly into practical applications that reduce energy consumption and conserve valuable resources in the long term.