Requirements on Intelligent Grids

Restructuring the public power supply to accommodate a large proportion of electricity from renewable sources poses major challenges to the electricity grid, its components and their operation management. Both the electric and communication requirements on these grid constituents are changing. In addition, the need to equip them with local but simultaneously interconnected intelligence is growing. However, these components cannot be tested and further developed during grid operation, except in special cases.

Fraunhofer ISE will therefore extend its competence in the fields of grid simulation and real-time communication environments. Our goal is to model complex grid arrays and operating situations flexibly on a laboratory scale, thus enabling detailed investigation of the behavior of devices or equipment at grid nodes. The test environments should make both stationary and also dynamic experiments feasible in a power range up to several hundred kilowatts.

In this way, Fraunhofer ISE will extend its important research focus on digitalization to the operation management of components. It also allows the analysis of interactions between components and the electricity grid to be further expanded. In particular, we will intensify our investigations of the grid connection of infrastructure for electromobility, aspects concerning the systems technology and operation management of micro-grids, and the automation of grid and system operation.