Smart Grids

AICO is contributing to the Integrating the Energy System Austria (IES) project, funded by the Austrian Climate and Energy Fund, managed by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), under contract number 853693.

The energy systems, in particular the electrical power distribution systems, have developed over many centuries and became a very reliable infrastructure, commonly assumed granted. However, it developed in line with a rather centralised energy production and hierarchic energy distribution paradigm. The liberalisation of the energy market and the steep rise of distributed regenerative energy production systems, in particular the integration of privately owned photovoltaic and wind energy systems in the low voltage grid, challenge the grid management.

Novel smart meters that primarily still measure the energy flow alike the legacy devices, add features that can ease the grid management tasks. They can be accessed remotely, and thus offer an economically feasible and highly granular energy flow monitoring option. The second generation of these smart meters shall in addition include interfaces to also control connected energy consumers, e.g., heating systems, car battery chargers, and so on, but also energy providing systems alike battery stacks and all kinds of distributed renewable energy harvesting systems.

The aim of the IES project is to establish a commonly agreed method to assess the interoperability of smart energy devices on the communication layer. This interoperability check shall as far as possible include the validation of the exchanged information, standards compliance, and all security demands raised and commonly applied in the energy sector. AICO actively contributes to the test design and in the development of a prototype test environment for several key use-cases.

More about Smart Grids: www.smartgrids.at

IESoverview.pdf