一個key objective of the future mechanical and plant engineering sectors is to achieve climate-neutral production. This is reinforced by the European Union’s “歐洲綠色交易,” which aims to make Europe climate-neutral by 2050. To achieve this goal, and to implement many other use cases, energy consumption data in production is an important prerequisite.
ODVA, OPC Foundation, PI,andVDMAfounded the “Power Consumption Management”group in May 2022. In this group, the OPC UA interface standard for energy consumption data is being developed.
The four organizations are working to harmonize and standardize energy consumption information on the shop floor, a crucial building block supporting the goal of global climate-neutral production in all sectors of the machinery and plant engineering industry. The activity is based, in particular, on the existing standards of the participating organizations; but also on other standards from the OPC Foundation, the VDMA, and external research. In combination with other OPC UA for Machinery use cases, such as status monitoring or job management, the calculation of the product and production-specific carbon footprint will be possible.
The results of the working group will be published as a new OPC UA specification. Future releases of the OPC UA for Machinery specification will leverage these results, ensuring that energy information from all machines and components on the shop floor can be provided in a standardized way as part of the Global Production Language.
Working groups within the VDMA are developing the Global Production Language. OPC UA Companion Specifications, for numerous sectors of the mechanical and plant engineering industry. The basic specification, OPC UA for Machinery, is a special case. Here, important building blocks are defined across all domains. Other specifications can be based on these building blocks.