Risk assessment of energy investment in the industrial framework – Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analysis for energy design and operation optimisation

The industry is a crucial actor towards the energy transition with the possibility to adopt new energy strategies including a prosumer model. However, industries are struggling to adopt smart energy approaches, and initiatives supporting them should be improved. To enhance industrial participation in energy transition, it is required to assess the optimal energy infrastructure considering its economic advantages and associated risks. Up to date, the literature dealing with energy sizing optimisation does not consider the time evolution of parameters or the uncertainty linked to the energy framework. The objective of this paper is to fill this literature gap by proposing a novel complete methodology to optimise the design and operation of the energy infrastructure for its lifetime while assessing its uncertainty and risk through an uncertainty analysis, as well as to identify the inputs causing it by a two-stage sensitivity analysis. This framework is applied to a case study based on a real industrial manufacturing SME. The results indicate that the proposed methodology produces robust results in front of the present uncertainties, being energy price the one that causes most of it and thus the one more attention should be paid to when evaluating energy investment decisions. •Complete methodology for energy investment optimisation in industrial SMEs.•Energy infrastructure investment optimisation considering lifetime operation.•Energy carriers and equipment cost current and future uncertainty characterization.•Risk identification and evaluation through uncertainty and sensitivity analysis.•Results show the methodology robustness and its utility for industrial SMEs.