To ensure the security of supply of our future energy system, we need not only an expansion of renewable energies, but also sophisticated control mechanisms that efficiently manage production, feed-in and consumption. Researchers at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) have therefore developed a predictive control algorithm that optimizes energy management at the building level - without compromising user comfort.
As the demand for renewable energies increases, so too does the importance of buildings when it comes to designing a sustainable energy system. While photovoltaic systems have long since proven their potential on a small scale - for a single-family home, for example - certain questions still arise when it comes to the security of supply of our overall energy system. However, the primary problem here is not the production of renewable energy, but the logistics associated with our distribution system. Up to now, this has been geared towards production plants that permanently feed a certain amount of energy into the electricity grid. To ensure that energy requirements are covered by renewable sources in the future, we need to expand production facilities and smart technologies that ensure grid stability at all times. This is because, unlike traditional energy sources such as coal or uranium, a solar plant does not produce the same amount of electricity all the time. On the one hand, energy demand must therefore be minimized when production is low; on the other hand, so-called production peaks must be consumed locally so as not to overload the power grid.
