E-Energy — Paving the Way for an Internet of EnergyAuf dem Weg zum Internet der Energie

E-Energy: Just another one of these short-lived ebuzzwords? It doesn’t look so! The adequate supply with various forms of energy is turning into one of the deepest challenges for mankind: How can we satisfy the growing world-wide demand for energy while reducing simultaneously the emission of greenhouse gases? The European Union has set up an ambitious strategic plan for developing low carbon technologies (see [1]) in order to support the 20-20-20 targets, which ask for reducing the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions by 20% and increasing its proportion of final energy consumption from renewable sources to 20%, both to be achieved by 2020. The German beacon project “E-Energy” addresses these challenges by providing strong financial support to six so-called model regions where project consortia from academia and industry cooperate over a period of four years to develop and test new concepts for enhancing the efficiency of the (electrical) energy system by the intelligent use of market mechanisms and of information and communication technologies (ICT). The objective of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) in cooperation with the Federal Environment Ministry (BMU) is to develop a future highly efficient energy system which guarantees the security of power supply and achieves an increased environmental compatibility (Fig. 1). E-Energy is meant to be Germany’s major contribution to the vivid global development efforts for Smart Grids. One of the major challenges of an increased share of power generation from renewable sources is the inevitable uncertainty with respect to the performance of these sources (which is particularly true for the volatility in distributed photo-voltaic and wind power generation). Since traditional energy management is more or less based on the assumptions that power demand cannot be controlled and that electrical power cannot be stored effectively, the existing energy system has to provide a sufficient amount of power generation capacity which can satisfy the peak demand even if the unreliable renewable sources for power generation are not available. Therefore, the approach of the E-Energy program is to introduce new degrees of leeway for managing the energy system by increasing the flexibility of power demand, supporting decentralized power generation, collecting real-time information about the current state of all the components of the energy system – from power generation over power distribution and storage to power consumption – and by creating new concepts for power storage (Fig. 2). The energy system will be transformed into an Internet of Energy: all its components are equipped with intelligent modules with unique addresses, standardized protocols may be used for communication in a completely decentralized system, and there will be a range of services supporting an energy management