In order to achieve the agreed energy policy goals in Germany, the municipal energy supply must also be further developed. A project of the TH Mittelhessen, which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with around 700,000 euros, is intended to contribute to this.
Under the direction of Prof. Dr. Thomas Stetz from the Department of Electrical and Information Technology (EI) is working on a team on the “transformation of municipal energy supply infrastructures under the influence of the German energy transition”. The cooperation partners are Stadtwerke Gießen and its subsidiary, Mittelhessen Netz GmbH.
The project is about the technical and economic improvement of local grids by coupling energy sectors with "smart grid technologies". This refers to intelligent systems for the central control of the power supply from generation to storage to consumption. Realizable solutions are to be developed so that municipal suppliers can provide the required share of renewable energies (80 percent) by 2050. This electricity, which is generated sustainably and cheaply, is to be used to a greater extent to generate heat and drive electric vehicles.
Because Gießen 's supply area includes inner-city, suburban and rural districts, it makes sense to use this as an example to show the future tasks of a medium-sized urban supplier. As part of the project, local energy scenarios are presented and concepts tailored to them for infrastructural expansion are developed. They are intended to support the implementation of the energy transition in municipal practice. For this purpose, the municipal companies provide the research team with real data on production, consumption and costs as well as on the energy networks for electricity, heat and gas. In this way, the partners want to create a location-based plan for the future. It is intended to provide an answer as to which economic investments in the infrastructure of the grid-connected energy supply are advisable so that the energy transition can succeed as intended by 2050.
At the THM Prof. Dr. Cathrin Schröder (EI) and Prof. Dr. Stefan Lechner from the Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering with Prof. Stetz in the research project, which includes analyzes of the technical-economic potential and the need for expansion of the infrastructure as well as the development of algorithms for the computer-aided control of consumers and producers in the supply network. The project has a duration of three years. It is funded by the BMBF’s “Research at Universities of Applied Sciences” programme.