Controlling individual household assets – such as heat pumps, electric vehicles, and rooftop PV installations – can help us to study the impact they have on the stability and operation of local networks and everything upstream. Working closely with the population of Walenstadt is a great way to test our original solutions as well as market platforms to connect energy operators with their customers. 

Our test community was launched at Walenstadt’s Energy Day in May 2024, when we introduced the Grid2050 project to the public, and has attracted participation from 25 households so far. We expect our initiative to lead to increased energy literacy and cooperation among residents, supporting the canton's energy concept.  

One of our first tasks was choosing and implementing an energy management system (EMS) for the network, enabling households to optimise their own energy usage while relieving the power grid, and providing a communications channel between consumers and the grid operator. After gathering input from the test community, careful evaluation of market offerings and further work with the manufacturer, we selected the Swiss product Solar Manager Gateway. Through Solar Manager’s built-in communications module we will continue to solicit feedback and gather the data that informs all our research. 

The interface in detail 

Each participating household will be interfaced with the distribution systems operator (DSO) via an energy management device that will receive and respond to signals from the DSO, enabling prosumers (consumers with PV systems, electric car charging stations and heat pumps) to coordinate their usage of these devices for the benefit of the overlying electricity grid. As a result, DSOs can harness the flexibility of end users without complex tariff structures.  

Solar Manager Gateway efficiently uses the solar power produced in the household, tracks energy consumption and optimises its electricity supply. To achieve this, the EMS communicates with the house’s major energy generators, consumers and storage facilities (including the PV system, the heat pump and the battery storage). The EMS provides a visual display of the production and optimized load profile data for the homeowner in an app, while the same data is cached in a specially created database for research purposes. 

The findings from Solar Manager use in the test community provide valuable insights into the actual operation of renewable energy sources in the power grid, allowing the project team to validate and improve theoretical studies as well as simulation models of the devices.