We divided our concrete applications in the Energy ICT-Research and -Development (R&D) within the OFFIS Division Energy into the following research groups:
The increasing number of renewable energy sources and controllable consumers opens the possibility of reaching a local balance between the power supply and usage. Integrated into virtual power plants, these installations can replace conventional large power plants. In our projects, we develop suitable co-ordination concepts for these topics, evaluate the efficiency and cost effectiveness in simulations and apply the results together with our partners from the industry and put research into the practice. At the same time, we investigate the question - which IT-architectures are applicable for the integration of distributed stakeholders within the energy market while bearing in mind the safety of data and systems. For the private households, we examine the adaptability to fluctuating power availability by controlling small devices like refrigerators, which - integrated in large numbers into virtual devices - can be used for a demand-side management. Beyond that, based on the typical load profiles of household devices, we develop new software supported energy consulting approaches for non-time based end consumers.
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The increasing fragmentation of energy management caused by the dispersion of distributed, renewable generators, results in changes to the communication and energy distribution structure. These mostly cannot be mapped into existing IT-Systems, since integration according to the idea of Plug and Play is not possible. To reach interoperability between the levels of field devices and control technology, an increasing amount of new standards and norms are being developed. OFFIS contributes actively to the international and national standardization, for example to the IEC or the German VDE/DKE and implemented together with CISE (Center for IT Standards in the Energy Sector) a competence center for automation and power system management, which offers the training of standards, consulting for the implementation in projects and decision support at the manufacturers, energy suppliers and the consultants.
The rapid development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), as well as its pervasion of all areas of life and economy, enable countless very positive effects like improved efficiency, virtual products and services. The downside of this development is the significantly increasing share of CO2 emissions, which already exceed that of air transportation. It is economically reasonable and ecologically necessary to rigorously improve the energy efficiency of the ICT systems. In the domain of energy efficiency of micro-electronics, OFFIS is already internationally established with its concepts and tools for “Low Power Design” and is a part of an European network of big semiconductor manufacturers and computer retailers. Furthermore, OFFIS works within national work groups and develops novel concepts for efficiency enhancements based upon innovative load and energy management solutions to reduce the power usage of computers, especially in data centers.
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Information systems are an instrument, that supports companies in the energy domain in achieving their strategical and corporate objectives. The basic conditions are rapidly changing requirements, historically grown heterogeneous IT-application landscapes and short innovation cycles. For information systems to endure in this stressful field, adjustable and more agile concepts for both individual applications and complete IT-application landscapes are required. At the same time, the focus on the energy domain must not be lost. The following key issues have an essential part in this: Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) is devoted to the documentation and planning of the IT-Application Landscape, along with their connections to the business and technical infrastructure. The bridge between IT and the professional domain is built by concepts, such as Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) and Domain Specific Languages (DSL). The Model-Driven Software Development (MDSD) delivers concepts and tools for optimizations, flexibility and acceleration of development processes. more
