SmartEco: An Integrated Solution from Load Balancing between the Grid and Consumers to Local Energy Efficiency

The transition from conventionally generated energy towards renewable energy sources is an important topic. Besides the need for new concepts for power plants this paradigm shift also implies new structural requirements for the grid. Especially, the on premise generation of energy via photovoltaics underlines the most important difference as compared to conventional energy generation and distribution. The structure of the grid, for most parts, still follows the pattern of a strong root connection from the power plant, transforming the energy for lower power distribution branches multiple times on the way to the consumer. One of the main characteristics of renewable energy sources is its more consumer local and distributed generation, where existing distribution paths will become more and more of a bottleneck in the future. One way to solve this problem would be to relinquish the current grid structure and replace it with a new more suitable one. Yet, such a fundamental structural change would require a very long time to be installed and induce cost far beyond benefit. The current solution, commonly called smart grid, is mostly driven by information, such as energy consumption amounts and times of customers, in order to match energy generation, distribution and consumption. Our SmartEco approach goes one step further and makes it possible, especially for small and local energy suppliers, to even offload some of the energy surplus from the grid into individual customer homes.