The transformation of the energy system toward an increasingly electrified, decentralized generation and consumption structure significantly increases the effort required to integrate and register facilities. New digital technologies, such as the digital twin in the form of the Digital Product Passport (DPP)—which will be required by regulation in the future—and the Asset Administration Shell (AAS), can fundamentally simplify existing processes and interfaces.

Currently, individual, manufacturer- or sector-specific siloed solutions prevent end-to-end digitization: Recurring manual data entry, inconsistent data models, and a lack of standardization complicate registration, approval, and control processes in the energy sector.

DPP4Energy addresses this issue by establishing the technical standards for the use of the DPP in two key use cases—the registration of facilities subject to registration requirements and the provision of flexibility services—thereby laying the foundation for uniform, cross-sector identity management of facilities.

The goal of the project is to prepare the Digital Product Passport (DPP), based on the Asset Administration Shell (AAS), for standardization in the energy sector and to test it using a prototype. This is intended to simplify, accelerate, and largely automate processes related to the registration of systems subject to registration requirements (e.g., PV systems, heat pumps, wallboxes) as well as the provision of flexibility (Redispatch 3.0, Section 14a of the Energy Industry Act [EnWG]).

OFFIS is contributing its expertise in digitized grid operations management and low-voltage control process chains to the project and is leading the “Flexibility Provision” use case, in which the coordinated activation of flexibility via the SMGW-based infrastructure (iMSys) and the universal ordering process based on DPP data is being investigated and prototyped.

In addition, OFFIS is playing a key role in defining common foundations and design principles for DPP 4.0 and its architecture. The data models and processes developed will be published in a standardization document (including as a VDE SPEC) and submitted to the relevant standardization bodies.

The project uses the Asset Administration Shell (AAS, IEC 63278) as the technical infrastructure for the Digital Product Passport (DPP 4.0) and is developing AAS sub-models for relevant product groups such as PV systems, heat pumps, wallboxes, and storage systems.

OFFIS is contributing its preliminary work from the Redispatch 3.0 project, as well as VDE SPEC 90032 “Redispatch 3.0 – Architecture and Processes for Congestion Management in the Distribution Grid with Systems Under 100 kW,” which it helped shape, and is implementing the “Flexibility Provision” use case as a prototype using an SMGW, control box, and gateway administrator in a hardware-in-the-loop approach.

Further foundations are provided by the experience gained from the int:net (Interoperability of Energy Systems) and InterOp (Interoperability Test Platform for Energy Transition Components) projects.