Demo 6 — Germany
Boosting energy efficiency in Karlsruhe's smart district
Energy market-driven multi-sector smart district
Domain
Electricity, Heat, Mobility
Partners involved
- Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
- FZI Research Center for Information Technology
- Stadtwerke Karlsruhe
- BES - Badische Energie -Servicegesellschaft mbH
The German demo, based in Karlsruhe in Germany, represents a pioneering application at the European level. It focuses on integrating multimodal technologies (electricity, heat, gas, and traffic) within a smart industrial, commercial, residential and educational district spanning over 140,000 m². In this demonstrator, the potential of buildings to contribute to improved energy usage and to offer ancillary services to the public distribution grid will be showcased.
The Karlsruhe district includes the Hopfner Bräu company, encompassing industrial buildings (the Hopfner brewery complex) and commercial buildings (such as the offices in the iWerkx building and the Cyberforum building, Germany’s largest network of IT companies), local shops, apartment buildings, and the FZI Research Center for Information Technology.
Through this demo, the main aim is to enable coordination among several industrial, commercial, residential and educational buildings within Karlsruhe’s smart district, transforming the buildings into an intelligent active utility node in the energy ecosystem by means of digital and market-driven business models and applications. Such transformation leads to the optimization of energy consumption while enabling the provision of services to the electrical distribution grid.
- Develop a software-based platform for building-integrated renewable energy systems;
- Demonstrate and evaluate options for building-integrated energy storage systems based on measurements from buildings;
- Create a multi-modal Digital Twin to study how the energy storage systems will operate given the heat demand, electrical and EV demands;
- Propose electricity market-based optimization approaches for the smart district to act as a unique intelligent node (e.g.: balancing power market and dynamic power tariffs);
- Develop new business models for operating smart commercial and industrial buildings, making their participation in grid control more attractive.
- Photovoltaic plants (120 kWp, 99 kWp and 15 kWp);
- CHP plants: BHKW HoLL (13 kWth – 6 kWe) and BHKW MGH (36 kW – 19 kWe);
- 22 EVs charging stations with 11 kW and 22 kW units;
- 8 commercial and industrial customers;
- Digital metering infrastructure with smart meter data systems;
- HPs currently being installed in different points of the district;
- Extension by building-integrated ESS options: either a V2G EV charging infrastructure or a Battery ESS with a capacity of 150 kW / 150kWh.
- Demonstrate the effective involvement of various buildings with different business purposes in coordinating energy usage, improving overall energy efficiency;
- Showcase the benefits of Digital Twins for optimizing buildings energy usage in distribution networks, including electrical, heating, and traffic layers;
- Display the advantages of market-oriented energy management systems for different business entities;
- Identify business cases and advantages in integrating energy management strategies at the building level;
- Put into effect building-integrated sustainable car-sharing services, improving energy management in buildings and implementing flexible charging profiles.
