22.03.2023

IEWT 2023 at TU Vienna

From February 15 to 17, 2023, the 13th IEWT Conference was held at the Vienna University of Technology. “The Future of Energy Markets in Europe against the Background of New Geopolitical Imbalances” was the headline of the event. There were several contributions from the FfE that were included in the program. In the following, we would like to briefly present them to you. If you are interested in more detailed information, you will find the download link to the full text under the respective abstracts.

Poster presentation: Marketing of Small-scale Assets in Germany – Current and Future Challenges and Opportunities

Currently, there is a transformation of our energy system towards flexible small-scale electric assets such as heat pumps and electric vehicles. Research is ongoing on how profitable business cases can be created to boost this transformation. Among others, the marketing of small-scale assets on the various electricity markets – for example, vehicle-to-grid use cases – is being discussed. This leads to the research question of how existing players for flexibility marketing in the different energy markets see opportunities and challenges for the marketing of small-scale assets in their portfolio.

To answer the research question in the project unIT-e², semi-structured interviews with different players of flexibility marketing in Germany are conducted. In the first step, current players of flexibility marketing in Germany are identified in a literature review. In the second step, relevant categories for the questionnaire are defined and an interview questionnaire is created. The following categories are considered: “the current situation of flexibility marketers” and “flexibility marketing of small-scale assets”. Depending on the player, the questionnaire will be adapted accordingly. The interviews are performed, and the interview results are compared and challenged with the literature.

For the interviews, we acquired interviewees from seven companies that represent different players in flexibility marketing, so a holistic analysis can be performed. Regarding today’s marketing situation, there is almost no marketing of small-scale assets. The main challenges for the marketing of small-scale assets are high technical and organizational costs with low margins – leading to low revenue potential – and a lack of acceptance (especially for electric vehicles). Possible price incentives are often greatly reduced by little favorable regulatory conditions such as levies, and lead to low margins (see Figure 1).

Figure 2: Challenges for the integration of small-scale assets

Regarding the opportunities and the future potential for flexibility marketing of small-scale assets, the answers differ. Overall, a slightly higher potential for spot markets than the balancing services can be identified, mainly due to the lower regulatory requirements.

In summary, almost all interview partners are addressing the issue of the marketing of small-scale assets. This clearly shows the importance of the topic.

Poster presentation: System Architectures for Use Case Visualization – A Comparison between Digital Platforms and Intelligent Electromobility

Research projects in the energy industry are increasingly focusing on testing practical, scalable, technical solutions that make a direct contribution to the success of the energy transition. In order to be able to test use cases in field trials in a targeted manner, an efficient, methodical approach is essential, which has not been sufficiently established in the industry to date, if at all.

As an important component on the way to implementation, this work presents a methodology for visualizing the overall technical landscape to be implemented. By applying the methodology, the so-called system architecture can be developed from the sum of all relevant technical use cases, which on the one hand serves the preparation of technical implementation projects. On the other hand, by simplifying the visualization of the system architecture, a comparison between different energy industry application areas can be drawn. To verify the universal applicability of the methodology, two different application areas are compared in this work. On the one hand, the simplified system architecture of use cases from the project InDEED is visualized, in which use cases are mapped based on a digital platform incorporating blockchain technology. On the other hand, a simplified system architecture for use cases of intelligently managed electromobility is visualized and discussed from the unIT-e² project.

Vereinfachte Systemarchitektur Projekt inDEED
Figure 2: Simplified system architecture of the use cases of the project InDEED
Vereinfachte Systemarchitektur Cluster Harmon-E
Figure 3: Simplified system architecture of the use cases of the cluster Harmon-E in the project unIT-e²

The comparison of the two simplified system architectures shows that the method presented is well suited for representing and comparing different application areas, and that both relevant differences and commonalities between the two application areas become apparent. In particular, it can be seen that, due to an overlap of the actors involved, synergies exist between the application areas with respect to the technical infrastructure to be created, which go beyond the synergies within the application areas. This results also suggest that the data transmission infrastructures to be created for each application area should be scalable and easy to expand.