Abstract
The paper is concerned with the energy analysis of automated warehouse complexes based on stacker cranes whose electric drives operate in regular energy recovery mode. This analysis aims to assess the potential for peak power reduction and the balance of energy consumption over the work cycle. A comparative analysis of the electric drive power section topologies is conducted: with energy dissipation on braking resistors, with a common DC link, and with an active front end (AFE), taking into account existing regulatory restrictions in the Russian Federation, which do not provide for compensation for recovered energy when transmitting it to the external grid. A formalized approach to describing energy processes is proposed based on the decomposition of drive power into motor and generator components, the establishment of summation rules for three power section topologies and the introduction of the internal energy exchange coefficient ηexchange, which characterizes the generated energy share distributed among the drives via a common DC link. A parametric study (24,000 computational points) of the dependence of ηexchange on the rack cell coordinates, load mass and duty cycle type was performed. The results were verified by comparison with the full model in the MATLAB/Simulink environment. It was found that for all studied modes, ηexchange< 0.53 (average 0.18): approximately half of the generated energy is dissipated in the braking resistor. The energy maps ηexchange(x,z) for the load placement and removal cycles have a qualitatively different structure. Two physical modes of energy exchange are demonstrated: exchange during the movement to the cell stage and exchange during the return stage. It is shown that, under the current legislation in the Russian Federation, the return of excess energy to the grid through an active rectifier is not compensated to the industrial consumer, which justifies the transition to topologies with a common DC link of a group of units without an active rectifier.
Keywords
stacker crane, automated warehouse, power section topology, frequency converter, uncontrolled rectifier, active rectifier, common DC link, energy recovery, generator mode, braking resistor, peak power, computer simulation, MATLAB/Simulink
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