New Consortium Ensuring German Energy Transition

A consortium behind a project called “ENSURE – New Energy Network Structures for the Energy Transition” has been selected by German federal government as one of four Copernicus projects.

The consortium, led by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, consists of core partners E.ON, RWTH Aachen University, TenneT TSO, Siemens and ABB, and 15 other partners.

The ENSURE project aims to develop and test efficient, forward-looking structures that combine centralized and distributed energy sources. It will place a special emphasis on addressing the technological and social aspects of this transformation process. It will encompass power transmission technologies as well as information and communications technologies, which will maintain balance and ensure stability in tomorrow’s networked supply structures, E.ON explained.

The ENSURE Copernicus project will have three phases. The first (2016 to 2019) will be devoted to basic research, the second (2019 to 2022) to pilot-scale trials. The third and final phase (2022 to 2025) will involve the construction of a large-scale, multi-modal network demonstrator, which will show what the future energy supply of an urban and surrounding area could look like.

“In Germany E.ON has integrated by far the most renewables into its networks. We believe our capabilities and experience will be integral to the project’s success,” said Thomas König, Managing Director of E.ON Deutschland. “ENSURE will go a long way toward developing the infrastructure for the increasing expansion of distributed generation and its integration into networks.”

The German federal government will provide about € 30 million of the more than € 43 million budgeted for the project’s first three years. E.ON said ENSURE will enhance its research in energy networks, which constitute one of the three core businesses of its new strategy.