Green warehousing practices: Assessing the impact of PV self-consumption enhancement strategies in a logistics warehouse

Abstract

Logistics facilities, while critical to industrial systems, significantly contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, necessitating improved operations, energy use, and renewable energy integration. The use of distributed renewable energy sources, with their intermittent and unpredictable generation, disrupts energy balance and leads to curtailment issues. This places a significant load on the electrical grid, increasing emissions and environmental problems, hindering the effective use of renewable energy. To address these challenges, modifications can be made to existing warehouses to increase their self-consumption. Empirical studies assessing the impact of such modifications, particularly in the logistics field, are lacking. This work contributes to the ongoing research by proposing a simulation-based approach that evaluates multiple scenarios for a real-world logistics facility to enhance the self-consumption ratio. This analysis is based on a conceptual framework providing a roadmap towards sustainable warehousing practices. The study simulates and presents multiple scenarios, including the base case, electrification of the heating system, and an opportunity charging strategy for MHE, aiming to enhance self-consumption, while examining environmental and economic performances, followed by a sensitivity analysis. Findings demonstrate a 25% increase in self-consumption and significant energy consumption reduction (-110 MWh/year) and CO2e emissions (-67.8 tons CO2e/year) for the final proposed scenario.