Data Acquisition and Management in Connected Energy Systems -lessons learned from the Research Project “Bidirectional Charging Management”

Sector coupling is understood as a main measure within the energy transition and decarbonization of the energy system. Bidirectional charging is a very impressive example for an interconnected energy system in the sense of sector coupling. Beside of the electrotechnical solution concepts one main challenge is to get all demands for data and customer requirements fulfilled in one common system architecture. So, it is necessary to include all stakeholders and their requirements into one common system to get the various functions running. This was achieved successfully by the team of the funded research project “Bidirectional charging management” (BDL). Data handling in the dimension of connecting an electric vehicle, PV-systems, other controllable loads in a customer’s home with grid operator demands and the energy market as well is challenging: Customers want to have a wide overview not only on their electric vehicles charging process but on the general energy flow in their household as well, information on the current cost situation with savings and potential earnings included. So, a lot of personal and private date are mandatory and lead us directly to all the legal requirements in terms of data privacy. In future service products, terms & conditions in the contract between customer and service provider have to respect data privacy. To get all required data, several measurement devices have to be installed not only in the electric vehicle and the wallbox, but also in the home installation. To enable interoperable and cost-efficient solutions, standardized equipment and interfaces are mandatory. A promising step into this direction will become the German smart metering system (intelligentes Messsystem—iMSys). This system will not only help to save the installation of additional meters and the related cost but also contribute to stabilizing the energy grid. The final question is: “How to bring all the resulting information to the customer by which means?” For this, app-solutions are already state of the art for single devices as electric vehicles or PV inverters. What’s missing today, are overall solutions integrating all these various domains.