Index
-
01
Research landscape -
02
Your goal -
03
Plan your stay -
04
Success stories -
05
Our service
- Research landscape
- Your goal
- Plan your stay
- Success stories
- Our service
- Research landscape
Bayreuth scientists are working on the secure data exchange for the energy transition
Together with partners, Bayreuth business IT specialists have developed a secure way of exchanging data in the energy system for the German Energy Agency (dena). The report “Fundamentals and significance of data spaces for the energy industry” was published on April 25. The authors are Prof. Dr. Jens Strüker and Dr. Marc-Fabian Körner from the University of Bayreuth.Apr 30, 2024, 2:20:05 PM
Theresa Hübner, Universität Bayreuth
--- What for? The declared goal of decarbonizing the electricity supply can only be achieved by feeding in more renewable energy in a decentralized manner. This means that previous methods of power plant deployment planning (so-called (re-)dispatch, which balances out who supplies how much electricity and when) will no longer be sufficient. And this challenge will become greater as the number of micro-generation plants feeding into the grid, such as PV systems or home storage systems, increases. Improved data exchange in the energy system generates considerable efficiency gains and ensures that less energy is needed in the system overall and less balancing of large power fluctuations in the grid is required. Because grid balancing is currently mainly carried out by fossil-fuel power plants, the increased data exchange directly reduces greenhouse gas emissions through improved coordination. Work on an efficient, secure data room for data exchange between many suppliers and consumers is therefore an important part of the energy transition. --- In order to test the necessary structures for efficient and secure data exchange between all partners in the electricity system, a reference architecture for an energy data space was developed and implemented in the dena-ENDA (ENergy DAta Space) project. This means that a secure virtual space was created in which all participants in a decentralized electricity supply network can exchange data in order to cushion power fluctuations, demand and generation adjustments, i.e. re-dispatch. This is necessary in order to ensure security of supply even under changing framework conditions. The Future Energy Lab, the pilot and networking laboratory for digital technologies of the German Energy Agency (dena), has implemented a project to establish data rooms in the energy industry in cooperation with ifok GmbH, Bonn Consulting, Fraunhofer FIT and innogence business consulting. Technical issues were clarified and a data room architecture developed in collaboration with the various stakeholders, e.g. distribution network operators, plant operators and service providers. Prof. Dr. Jens Strüker, Professor of Information Systems and Digital Energy Management, and Dr. Marc-Fabian Körner, Postdoc in Information Systems, both at the University of Bayreuth and working for FIT, provided scientific support for the project and wrote the report. “The energy crisis has painfully highlighted the lack of digital data exchange in the energy industry: government support could not be provided in a targeted manner as energy consumption data was lacking, as was end-to-end digital communication between households, companies on the consumer side and energy suppliers on the other,” reports Strüker. “For the energy sector, improved data exchange would mean that data from various energy generation and consumption units of different sizes could be shared, exchanged and processed under defined guidelines.” The pilot project that has now been announced is the first such data room to be set up in the German energy sector. Strüker explains: “In general, data rooms enable the sovereign and self-determined exchange of data across company boundaries. They use existing standards, technologies and governance models of the data economy to integrate data security, sovereignty, interoperability and transferability as well as trust between stakeholders in a fair software infrastructure. They are based on a decentralized software infrastructure that provides the necessary software functionalities within an ecosystem of stakeholders. Data rooms provide a basis for the development of smart services and innovative cross-company business processes.” The Bayreuth business IT specialists are working across the board to answer the question of new approaches for a real-time energy economy and thus for effective climate protection in order to make a contribution to the environment and society. Through the realization of data spaces, new fields of application can be opened up and rethought, e.g. to promote the implementation of energy communities, i.e. the optimization and implementation of peer-to-peer energy trading, or to better coordinate the charging processes of electric vehicles with the local electricity mix and load forecasts.