No abstract

Energy efficiency is a concern impacting both ecology and economy. Most approaches aiming at reducing the energy impact of a site focus on only one specific aspect of the ecosystem: appliances, local generation or energy storage. A trade-off analysis of the many factors to consider is challenging and must be supported by tools. This paper proposes a Model-Driven Engineering approach mixing all these concerns into one comprehensive model. This model can then be used to size either local production means, either energy storage capacity and also help to analyze differences between technologies. It also enables process optimization by modeling activity variability: it takes the weather into account to give regular feedback to the end user. This approach is illustrated by simulation using real consumption and local production data from a representative agricultural site. We show its use by: sizing solar panels, by choosing between battery technologies and specification and by evaluating different demand response scenarios while examining the economic sustainability of these choices.

Self-consumption of renewable energies is defined as electricity that is produced from renewable energy sources, not injected to the distribution or transmission grid or instantaneously withdrawn from the grid and consumed by the owner of the power production unit or by associates directly contracted to the producer. Designing solutions in favor of self-consumption for small industries or city districts is challenging. It consists in designing an energy production system made of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries that fit the annual weather prediction and the industrial or human activity. In this context, this paper reports the context of this business domain, its challenges, and the application of modeling that leads to a solution. Through this article, we highlight the essentials of a domain specific modeling language designed to let domain experts run their own simulations, we compare with existing practices that exist in such a company and we discuss the benefits and the limits of the use of modeling in such context.