The idea of developing smart local substations originated four years before the official project start in December 2020 and is now being further developed at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences. Professor Jeromin, who is in charge of the Department of Electrical Power Supply, Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, and Mathias Pfeffer, the managing director of Ingenieurbüro Pfeffer, used to be business partners. The question already arose back then as to whether and how “excess” electricity could be put to sustainable use. “Due to rapidly changing requirements and conditions of use, it is important now more than ever before to understand how grids react to changing circumstances,” says Jeromin.

Unlike the “Grid4Regio” project, which Jeromin is also supervising, “Smart Grid LAB Hessen” is concerned not solely with the efficient use of regional energy. Instead, the project goes a step further: the aim is to actively control energy flows according to supply and demand and to be able to adapt “smartly”. “Our tests deliver answers to important questions of the future,” says Jeromin. The Darmstadt Research Group for Sustainable Energy Systems (daFNE), led by Professor Ingo Jeromin and Professor Athanasios Krontiris, is concentrating on tests under realistic conditions, which aim to replicate active control processes and all the necessary functionalities. With the support of their colleagues Till Neukamp and Sophia Pfeffer, the research team wants to find out how the power grid can be stably controlled when, for example, a large number of electric vehicles are being charged at the same time at selected points, or how a power failure (blackout) can be prevented if a storage system or important measurement and control components malfunction.

A replica of a “residential district of the future”, in which all energy sources and types of consumption are modelled on real conditions, serves as a testing ground. The h_da project team has developed the various scenarios under which the Smart Grid LAB operates. These show, for example, what “prosumers” mean for the power grid. What is understood by “prosumers” is customers who not only consume energy but also produce it themselves at certain times. In this case, the smart grid would measure and analyse the electricity flows and decide autonomously how the electricity fed into the grid should ideally be distributed.

It is quickly clear from this example that the project must also set high standards as far as data security is concerned: “As a result of the ever-increasing data streams generated by smart components and the high degree of complexity of the power grid, grid management is becoming more and more challenging. Ensuring the highest possible protection for all processes and sensitive data is extremely important. Data security and resilience are crucial,” says Jeromin. The consortium is supported by QGroup, a company specialised in multi-level IT-based security systems. The power grid of the future must be adaptable and able to respond dynamically to constantly changing requirements, he adds. Jeromin emphasises that achieving this makes a paradigm shift inevitable.