UdZ 2-2013

15 Unternehmen der Zukunft 2/2013 UdZ in pan-European Smart Energy trials starting in March 2013. FINESCE FINESCE will organise and run user trials in 7 European countries. Building on investments of billions of Euros, FINESCE will be addressing efficient energy usage in residential and industrial buildings, developing a new prosumer (consumer and producer) energy marketplace, building a cross-border private virtual power plant and using electric vehicles as an element of demand response systems. Furthermore FINESCE will enable energy providers to move from reactive to pro-active energy network management by providing them with Future Internet ICT to improve balancing of volatile solar and wind energy generation on the one hand and energy consumption on the other hand. The FINESCE trials will prove the practical appli- cability of Future Internet technologies and the FI-WARE Generic Enablers regarding the challen- ges of the energy sector. FINESCE will develop an active community of innovative SME’s, preparing them for the exploitation of the emerging busi- ness opportunities in the energy sector, creating jobs, wield social impact and increase economic growth. FINESCE builds upon and extends the re- sults of the FI-PPP FINSENY project to prepare the large scale roll out of phase III all over Europe to realise sustainable real time smart energy services. FIR is involved in WP 3 “FI developing the B2B energy eco-system”. The shift towards renewable energies imposes challenges on the supply and demand-side. A key characteristic of electrical energy from alternative sources like wind, solar or bio energy is its fluctuating availability and its decentralised and distributed production. Sites for alternative energy sources are typically selected such that the energy production is optimised. Commonly, these sites do neither match the sites of (former) large power plants nor the sites of the consumers of energy. This leads to a geogra- phical imbalance between supply and demand that has to be tightly monitored, controlled and managed and requires usage of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) developed for the Future Internet. This trial will address these challenges from the perspective of the B2B energy ecosystem. On the demand-side, challenges faced by lar- ge consumers of electrical energy in industrial manufacturing are addressed in stream one. On the supply-side, the challenges of cross-border cooperation and coordination for supply-side management of renewable energy sources are addressed in stream two (cf. figure 3, page 14). The objective of the first stream is to investigate and exploit the opportunities of energy manage- ment in a factory in terms of monitoring and demand flexibility. Understanding and optimizing the relation of the production process and energy usage is the key to solve the challenges of incre- asing energy costs for industrial manufacturing in Europe. Simultaneously, it is necessary to gain insights into how industry can take advantage of flexible electricity tariffs in the future, since tariffs with changing electricity prices will be a result of volatile energy production (due to increased share of renewables). The integrated and appropriately visualised view on energy management within a factory and the electricity system will widen the perspective on industrial and B2B smart grid applications. Insights on energy saving, load shifting opportunities and energy efficient pro- duction planning to advance the state of the art are urgently needed to prepare Europe’s industry for these future changes. The objective of the second stream is to investi- gate and leverage the future potential of regional cross-border cooperation and coordination for supply-side management of renewable energy sources, i.e. a cross-border VPP. The European Commission envisioned in the Energy Roadmap for 2050 a more integrated European view on transmission, distribution and storage of electrical energy. The cross-border VPP setup allows for unique insights into the technical, regulatory and legal challenges and opportunities faced when connecting energy networks and Future Internet applications in multiple countries. For stream one, the demonstration production plant RWTH Aachen Campus Cluster Logistics (figure 4) is the basis for designing, testing and evaluating the effect of energy awareness in production [3]. The stream aims at examining new possibilities to manage and efficiently control energy consumption and effectiveness in manuf- acturing companies. figure 4: Layout of the demonstration plant at the Campus Cluster Logistics at RWTH Aachen University FIR-Forschungsprojekte