Hybrid Grids Demo

Electricity and district heating grids are linked to form functional electricity storage systems. Producers and consumers receive recommendations on when it makes sense and is cost-effective to feed energy into the grid and when to consume it.

The city as an "energy sponge" that can optimally absorb and release the energy supply in the urban area and the surrounding area: This is the vision behind the "Hybrid Grids Demo Hartberg" project. This method should make it possible to store energy when demand is low and then release it when demand increases. To this end, the urban energy system is being transformed into a functional energy storage system that can store large amounts of energy. The energy supply and utilisation system will be made more flexible - with a passive, cross-energy carrier and cross-grid distribution grid management system that does not actively intervene in the sensitive grid control.

The technological centrepiece is a central optimiser. It is set up in parallel with the existing control infrastructure. It provides producers and consumers with recommendations, for example that you should not heat up your buffer storage tank when energy demand is high, but later when there is a district heating surplus and the energy can be purchased more cheaply. As a user, you decide for yourself whether to accept the recommendation or not. In a further expansion stage, there will also be automated processes.

There are also pragmatic reasons why such a test run is being undertaken in a town like Hartberg: The unbundling regulations in a liberalised market would make it difficult to test such a hybrid network approach.

One crucial aspect of the project is that many different load profiles are taken into account in this test run. There are different types of consumers. A private household has a different load profile over time than a restaurant where lunch is cooked. A factory has a different profile to a bakery. Similarly, different energy generation plants have different generation profiles. Here, too, it is important to utilise synergy effects and potential for flexibilisation in order to make the overall system more efficient.

This project is funded by the Climate and Energy Fund and is being carried out as part of the "Smart Cities Demo" programme.