Energy grids

The surge of renewables and the need to move away from fossil energy brings new challenges to the electric grid and energy distribution in general. There is a change from central generation and distributed consumption, e.g. nuclear power plants, to distributed generation with various energy sources and distributed consumption.

This poses interesting research questions for control and optimization like autonomous operation of microgrids, clever energy distribution design (e.g. using and distributing exhaust heat of an industrial site), energy storage, and so on.

We have unique living labs for our research:

• Walenstadt is a small community in the east of Switzerland with plenty of hydropower, photovoltaic, and battery storage. They are working with us to achieve energy autonomy. Learn more about the project here.

• In Sisslerfeld in the north of Switzerland, four communities want to double their industrial park in size in a sustainable manner. This brings interesting challenges in the realms of mobility, energy distribution (electric, heating, cooling, …), urban planning, sustainability, etc. For more information, click here.

• Empa’s NEST is not only the coolest building of all times, it is also a playground for control engineers for all things related to control of energy hubs. More information about NEST can be found here.