The Berlin workshop
Dear friends,
We had the workshop at the EUREF Campus yesterday. The first thing to do, is a big thanks to all the participants: Professors Guerrero and Vasquez that made the trip from Aalborg to participate, Johannes Sigulla that hosted us at Schneider Electrics, Andreas Raab from the lab SENSE, Anna Verena Münch of TU Berlin, Florian Schaller of the Reiner Lemoine Institut, Robert Demming of NBB, Daniel Freund of the TU Berlin DAI. You did a great job, and we learned so much during our workshop. We had the great chance to have people from all the walks of the spectrum of working areas on the Microgrid, and that gave us a unique opportunity to talk about the inter-disciplinary topics of the decentralized society system. We will be posting very soon the summary file of the workshop, and you will be able to follow the discussions that we had, but we can give you fresh insider’s look here.
The workshop at the EUREF Campus was an opportunity to have an open discussion around the developing topics that arise in the Micro-grid, but it was also to understand better the deployment of the micro smart grid in Berlin. Therefore, we started with a presentation of the project. The EUREF Campus is especially interesting because, like Johannes explained it, it started from a mobility project. The project Mobility2Grid was the main motivator of the consortium to create an innovation campus. The point was to find new mobility solution, and especially to explore the electrical mobility option. The Work Package (WP) pushed the team to think about where is the energy used is coming from, and by extension the role of the grid. Due to its long history, the campus provided a unique opportunity: indeed, it used to be a gaz-producing industrial area. And that meant an electrical grid separated from the main Berliner grid (it is apparently standard … but what a discovery!). It allowed the team to develop a micro smart grid and to test the deployment of smart city tools. Because that is what the EUREF Campus is all about in the end, a Smarter City.
After a discussion around the projects Tournesol discovered in Europe, and a reflection around the differences and similarities between those and Berlin we headed for lunch. The lunch break was also a great opportunity to visit the installations of the Campus. It is like looking at the future of the power systems being built. If you ever pass by Berlin Schonberg, we strongly recommend that you go and have a tour of the campus, and take a look of the kind of innovating solution and business models being developed out there. If you feel like renting an electric car or scooter, charging your car by a rolling charging bus and many more you can know more on their website: http://www.euref.de/de/standort-entwicklung/energie-mobilitaet/micro-smart-grid/
Finally, we had several round tables around three topics. The first one was how to build energetic communities. We had the chance to have Anna with us to talk about the finding around the campus and the motivation of the energy engagement. We could talk about what it took to create a working consortium in Berlin, and what are the key success factors for the creation of community strategy. We then went on to talk about the services that the microgrids could potentially provide to the main grid. This last term was actually criticized by Andreas Raab, as it is difficult to size a microgrid. It is obvious then that interconnected grids is the future of the electrical system that they try to develop at EUREF. That movement actually already started with the interconnection of the EUREF Campus and the Sudkreuz train station (that is also part of the project, and received several renewable production means see more here: ). On this topic, the discussion was more difficult as it derives toward the justification of the micro-grid for urban areas, which not obvious. Finally, the third topic was the one of the business model of the microgrid. There our discussion made it clear that the microgrid is more of a transformation tool. It is not yet clear if its implementation will bring forward new revenue streams, but rather it will help companies diversify their activities and relationship with the community. The participant confided that they could already see the transformation in their respective organizations. And that is already the beginning of the transition.
The discussions were very enriching and we hope to be able to do that again with the Berlin project team and with other project teams. But for now, we are moving on to the next stop on our trip, MVV Mannheim which developed SmartCity Mannheim.