Smart Prognosis of Energy with Allocation of Resources

ABOUT SPEAR

MOTIVATION

SPEAR was a pan-European research project proudly bearing the ITEA label. The consortium consisted of 22 partners from five European countries. As the name suggests, SPEAR aimed to spawn ground-breaking research results and prototypes for energy optimisation in industrial production processes.

SPEAR’s heart is an extremely flexible and highly generic optimisation platform. This platform hosts a comprehensive set of optimisation algorithms - each one facilitating an effective and profitable energy optimisation of highly complex production processes. SPEAR does not focus on isolated industry sectors, rather, a broad spectrum of application domains like production processes in common plants, production lines, buildings, hybrid drives, and wind turbine drive trains is supported. Moreover, the energy-specific optimisation of existing and new production plants during virtual commissioning and during the running production is supported.

SPEAR overcomes available approaches by means of a unique mechanism. Instead of using estimated or simplified models for the simulation-based optimisation, our solution makes use of the real device-provided simulation models in order to produce highly accurate forecasts for the energy consumption of industrial production processes. The accuracy of these forecasts together with the developed optimization algorithms enables a significant reduction of energy consumption and costs.

GOALS

SPEAR created an extendable platform for energy and efficiency optimizations of production systems with the following features

  • Usable as a local or cloud based application

  • Adapts the energy usage of the production system to the current energy supply

  • Upgrades classic production system to cyber physical production systems to allow measurement of signals

  • Integrates physical models to calculate the energy demand instead of using cost-intensive sensors to measure it

  • Uses FMI standard (Functional Mockup Interface) as basis for energy modelling and simulation

  • Provides a simulation of the production system to predict current and future energy usage and costs of components over time

  • Simulates the energy usage on a distributed infrastructure consisting of low-cost hardware and/or desktop computers with different operating systems

  • Simulation of energy behavior runs in parallel with existing mechanical simulation tools

  • Permanently updates the simulation system with the cyber physical measurements

  • The software connecting the simulation and the real production system’s signals is provided as Open Source

  • Distribution of energy simulation, coupling with mechanical simulation and with real production systems is based on ROS™ (Robot Operating System)

  • Provides an extendable library of optimization methods

  • Optimization methods can be extended independently of the optimization platform

PRESENTATION OF THE RESULTS

Project SPEAR Main Video

Project SPEAR WP2 Results

Project SPEAR WP3 Results

Project SPEAR WP4 Results

Project SPEAR WP5 Results

NEWS & MEDIA

Latest News

Last Review

The last review of our ITEA_3 project was successfully completed on the 17th of September 2020.

This time it was an online meeting due to the current situation. We are happy to have brought the project to a successful conclusion.

Read more in our press release

SPEAR at Smart City Expo World Congress

SPEAR will be present at Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, 19-21 November 2019

Expect the SPEAR team at the ITEA booth at the Smart City Expo World Congress from 19 to 21 November 2019 in Barcelona, Spain. http://smartcityexpo.com

Exchange between EnbW and SPEAR partners

SPEAR partners met the energy provider EnbW in Karlsruhe, 21 August 2019

Exchange between EnBW and SPEAR partners let’s dev and EKS InTec regarding the information required for energy preplanning by the energy provider.

International Meeting of SPEAR #4

SPEAR team had the 4th international meeting at EKS InTect in Weingarten, 26 July 2019.

This international meeting took place in Weingarten at the EKS InTec. During this meeting we discussed organizational and technical questions. All project partners were invited and were present on these two days. Prior to this meeting, partners who want to learn how the RF::Suite tools work will receive training so that they can use the tools for the FFT use case.

Real measurements and recording on the FFT demonstrator

SPEAR was presenting the FFT demonstrator in Fulda, 27 July 2019.

At this meeting energy measurements were made directly on the robot controllers with ABBRobotStudio and additionally with RF::ABBRead all control signals and position values of both ABB robots were recorded at different robot speeds (between 5% and 25% with 5% steps). These values will play an important role for further activities.

Presentation at "Erfa VIBN und Digitaler Zwilling in der Robotik & Automation"

SPEAR was presenting our results at VDMA, 28 June 2019.

Presentation of the ENTOC & SPEAR approach at the event "Erfa VIBN und Digitaler Zwilling in der Robotik & Automation". The main topic of the discussions was FMI/FMU.

SPEAR partners discussed the work planing progress at Ruhr Uni in Bochum, 19 June 2019

Active discussions take place between SPEAR partners at Ruhr-Uni Bochum regarding the work planning and progress of WP2 / WP3 & WP4 (Simulation Environment via ROS & RF::Suite, FMI, etc.)

Meeting with company CADENAS

SPEAR team had a meeting with the company Cadenas at Daimler in Ulm, 17 April 2019.

At this meeting the first official discussion with CADENAS regarding the possible operation of an FMI App-Store after ENTOC was held. EKS participated in this meeting and presented the findings and experience. In particular, EKS addressed SPEAR's need for energy and power values.

International meeting at ENTES and KANCA

SPEAR team had a meeting at ENTES and KANCA in Istanbul, 9-10 April 2019.

At this meeting all international project partners of SPEAR came together to have detailed and concrete discussions about the planned goals and demonstrators. Through this meeting the next steps for the achievement of the goals were discussed and the preparation for the first review meeting started. The focus was on planning the demonstrations for the SPEAR period.

Presentation by EKS at the 5th International B2B Software Days 2019

SPEAR team was presenting our results at the 5th International B2B Software Days in Vienna, 14-15 March 2019.

EKS participated in Workshop 3: Business Impact of Software Innovation on 15.03.2019. EKS presented the experience gained over the last years and the successes achieved in a lecture. Among them the SPEAR project was addressed as an important milestone. Of course, the support of DLR and BMBF was also explicitly explained.

Eureka Innovation Days features SPEAR Project

SPEAR Project was presented during Eureka Innovation Days in Helsinki, 22-24 May 2018.

In Eureka Innovation Days 2018 projects and ideas related to Smart Mobility, Smart Health, Smart Energy and Smart Industry were discussed by 926 attendees from 32 countries. Within the program we attended to interesting key notes, panel debates, demonstrators and very interesting spontaneous discussions. Attending to Eureka 2018 was an inspirational experience for our works on SPEAR.

SPEAR at Automatica 2018

SPEAR team was presenting our first results at Automatica 2018 in Munich, 19-22 June.

In Automatica industry’s key players from the automated production processes branch exhibit their innovative solutions to more than 43.000 visitors, more than one third from abroad (see 2016 exhibition statistics ( see 2016 exhibition statistics ). This year, FTT’s use case of SPEAR was presented to the visitors by our partners Dr. Anton Strahilov and Jörg Reeb.

Workshop am 12 - 13.06.2018

Workshop in Weingarten - WP2 & WP3 German partners were working together in a Workshop organised by EKS Intec in Weingarten, 12-13 June.  

This workshop was dedicated to further elaborate the specifications for WP2 [Development, Distribution, and Scaling of Energy Models] and WP3 [Efficient Energy Simulation Environment]. Interesting outcomes of the workshop will be presented in ITEA's review meeting and published in the corresponding deliverables very soon, stay tuned!

Innovation Days

From 22nd to 24th of May 2018, the Eureka Innovation Days take place in Helsinki, Finland. Over 1.000 participants from all over the world are expected for this event. Forward-looking key-notes and presentations of concrete business cases will give insights on the business and technology development on the subjects of Smart Energy, Smart Health, Smart Mobility and Smart Industry.

The Eureka Innovation Days event is a great opportunity for the SPEAR consortium to promote the project’s progress and results and to discuss ideas with international experts from academia and industry. We are highly interested in feedback from experts from the realms of Smart Energy and Smart Industry since SPEAR particularly addresses these very application domains. By presenting SPEAR at the Eureka Innovation Days, we hope to drastically increase the project’s visibility.

Meeting in Gothenburg

On 17th and 18th October, the international SPEAR consortium met in Gothenburg, Sweden in order to discuss the project’s progress. On the first day, Chalmers University of Technology welcomed us on their grounds and basic project topics were discussed. In the evening, Volvo Car Corporation invited all SPEAR partners to join a dinner at Heaven 23, a classy restaurant with a spectacular view over Gothenburg. On the second day, our Volvo Partners invited us to their headquarter, located just outside Gothenburg.

Throughout the second day, the SPEAR consortium discussed the latest work package results and planned future steps. During a session break we were actually visited by Håkan Samuelsson, Volvo Car’s CEO, who informed himself about the SPEAR project. Apart from this visit, Volvo came up with another highlight in the afternoon. The SPEAR partners were driven to the “Demo Centre”, an in-plant test road. For two hours, all participants were allowed to select demo cars from a car pool of roughly 30 different Volvo models and to enter the test track for one or two 2km rounds. Two ours were over far to quickly and we’re all looking forward to our next international consortium meeting.

German Consortium Meeting

From December 11th until December 12th, the German SPEAR consortium came together in Stuttgart in order to determine the current project status and to discuss the next steps for the year 2018. The meeting was held at the premises of our SPEAR partner TWT GmbH Science & Innovation as well as at the factory premises of our associated Partner DAIMLER AG.

The meeting was extremely fruitful, not only that we managed to set up a clear schedule for the next six moths, but we also gained insight into the daily business of our hosts TWT and DAIMLER. On the first day’s evening, we came together for a traditional Swabian dinner in downtown Stuttgart and celebrated a successful project start.

Kickoff Meeting

We can proudly state that SPEAR was officially kicked-off! The official kick-off meeting was held on September 5th and 6th in Fulda, Germany. Despite the kickoff was done with emphasis on the German consortium (representatives of the the German project controller DLR-PT were present) all partners participated in the meeting.

The kick-off was held at the corporate headquarters of FFT Produktionssysteme GmbH & Co. KG. It was the first event in which all partners came together and was comprehensively used to discuss the individual objectives and hopes that each partner puts in SPEAR. The evening of the 5th was concluded with traditional Hessian cuisine in downtown Fulda.

SPEAR consortium presents official logo

The SPEAR consortium agreed on a joint project logo. Proposals were made by most of the partners while the final selection was done by vote. The winning logo was created by the award-winning design team of DAI-Labor, Technische Universität Berlin.

WORK PACKAGES

DISSEMINATION

Title
Author(s)
Type
Submission Date
Sequential Tasks Shifting for Participation in Demand Response Programs
Mahsa Khorram, Pedro Faria, Zita Vale
Scientific Paper
Industrial Facility Electricity Consumption Forecast Using Artificial Neural Networks and Incremental Learning
Daniel Ramos, Pedro Faria, Zita Vale, João Mourinho, Regina Correia
Scientific Paper
Use of Sensors and Analyzers Data for Load Forecasting: a Two Stage Approach
Daniel Ramos, Brígida Teixeira, Pedro Faria, Luis Gomes, Omid Abrishambaf, Zita Vale
Scientific Paper
Probabilistic Determination of Consumers Response and Consumption Management Strategies in Demand Response Programs
Andrea Bortolato, Pedro Faria, Zita Vale
Scientific Paper
Scheduling of a Textile Production Line Integrating PV Generation Using a Genetic Algorithm
Carlos Ramos, Rúben Barreto, Bruno Mota, Luís Gomes, Pedro Faria, Zita Vale
Scientific Paper