Green power is wasted: 12 partners will find the solution through digital control of the electricity grid

It harms the climate when the green power from solar cells and wind turbines is lost. And we as a society must become far better at exploiting when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing if we are to achieve the goal of green transformation of society. This is the message from the Danish-Swedish collaboration Greater Copenhagen Green (GCG), which has members as the major operator of chargers for electric cars E.ON, the partnership for green conversion Gate 21, several municipalities and DTU.

For the drawing board

A total of 12 partners from GCG are now launching an innovation hub for solutions that will contribute to better utilization of renewable energy. First and foremost, the solutions must be used in the Copenhagen and Malmö area, where the project’s partners belong, so that the experiences can later be spread to more countries.

“The consequence of our systems today is that we do not have an efficient use of our renewable energy. We must have created digital solutions that make it possible to utilize the green power when it is there. It can e.g. be about to have a digitally controlled access to electric car chargers that can be used when there is plenty of power on the grid, ”says professor and head of the Center for Electricity and Energy, Jacob Østergaard, who is one of the project’s key people.

He and his partners are on their way to the drawing board to create the solutions that in the future will make Denmark a pioneer in the use of green electricity. It is the ambition that requires more than just the right ideas. The municipalities will play a much bigger role in the future when it comes to the utilization of our green energy. JACOB ØSTERGAARD, PROFESSOR AND MANAGER, DTU ELEKTRO

Because there is a lot of regulation in the energy field in both Denmark and Sweden, while there are also great demands for data processing and access to the energy grid. Therefore, it has been fundamental to both acquire competencies from the private business sector and the public sector, says Jacob Østergaard.

Important coupling

“Municipalities will play a much bigger role in the future when it comes to the use of our green energy, so the more we can connect business, municipalities and universities from the beginning, the greater the chance of success,” he says, referring to to the Danish objectives of phasing out fossil energy such as coal and gas in the business sector.

If the efficiency of the energy supply is to be improved with the necessary cadence, in addition to private-public cooperation, there is also great value in getting the many links and companies in the sector tied together in the work.

The operator of charging stations E.ON is i.a. part of the project, while the cluster organization for the energy sector Energy Cluster Denmark is also actively participating. Here, CEO Glenda Napier also notices that the possible solutions can later become huge export opportunities.

“If together we can crack the code to connect more renewable energy into e.g. the transport sector and district heating, we will solve one of the major climate challenges. The rest of the world will also notice this, ”she says.

Tests in the sandbox

The 12 partners are now starting to create the automatic energy solutions that will play together with e.g. charging stations for electric cars in private homes or at petrol stations.

However, you do not get easy access to such systems, and therefore the project has a number of test areas or “living labs”, where the new solutions can be tested in practice by partially being exempted from current regulation.

The experimental areas are spread across Zealand and southern Sweden and have already proved extremely useful in previous projects, assesses the mayor of Helsingborg municipality and spokesman for Greater Copenhagen Green, Peter Danielsson.