The flexibility plant

as a virtual power plant 2.0

The flexibility plant is a new form of virtual power plant that enables the economic integration and operation of small energy systems in particular for the first time. It is an automated, standardized and technology-neutral system solution. It consists of the swarmBOX and swarmHUB components and solves the three main problems of today's virtual power plants:

Reduction of project planning effort and initial costs when setting up a virtual power plant for the first time
Reduction of implementation costs for installation and configuration when integrating several energy systems
Increasing operating income through the combination of marketing options (e.g. optimization of own requirements + direct marketing)

Good reasons for the flexibility plant

Pooling energy systems

Thousands of energy systems from small to large can be bundled with the Flexibility Plant in a highly automated and technology-neutral manner.

Pooling flexibility

The flexibility (controllability) of energy systems can be predicted and thus marketed profitably.

swarmBOX - the self-learning control box - physical or virtual

The swarmBOX plays a central role within the system architecture of the flexibility plant in its physical or virtual version. Designed as a self-learning control box, the swarmBOX is able to create forecasts for static electrical energy and heat demand forecasts or to determine a mobility demand forecast for electric vehicles. Based on demand forecasts, the available flexibility (controllability) is predicted, taking into account the system parameters and local optimizations.

The physical swarmBOX is used wherever data acquisition from or control of energy systems via TCP/IP-based protocols is not possible for technical reasons. This is the case, for example, with older PV and wind power systems, heat pumps or charging stations.

With its extensive and variably configurable range of interfaces, the swarmBOX can be adapted to the specific requirement.

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The virtual swarmBOX is used when data acquisition from or control of energy systems via TCP/IP-based protocols is possible via a protected Internet connection (VPN). This connection option is ideal for a large number of modern energy systems (e.g. PV inverters, wallboxes, PV park controllers, etc.).

The use of the virtual swarmBOX saves hardware and installation costs, which can make the integration of smaller energy systems in particular economical.

A modular software system has been and is being developed for the swarmBOX. This combines a variety of functionalities that go beyond the function of a pure control box. These include, in particular, modules for creating forecasts, for various system interfaces or for determining flexibility potential.

swarmHUB - the higher-level coordinator

The swarmHUB acts as the central control center and operations management instance in the flexibility plant. To this end, it combines the individual physical and virtual swarmBOXes and can therefore be used in various application areas.

The system-architectural use of decentralized intelligence enables the functionalities of the swarmHUB to be restricted to aggregation, deployment planning and disaggregation, and to achieve high scalability with low resource utilization.

The swarmHUB provides a variety of functionalities in the role of a virtual power plant. It pools the individual energy assets with their forecasts of demand and feed-in, aggregates flexibility potential and can handle deployment planning based on one or more target values. Thanks to its wide range of functionalities, it is suitable as a:

Sub-aggregator for established virtual power plants
Aggregator of energy assets for portfolio marketing
Aggregator of flexibilities for flexibility trading

The deployment planning for the pool can be effected either in the flexibility plant or by the customer's system or a third party (e.g. Algo-Trader). In principle, deployment planning must be oriented to the customer's business model. Examples of target values can be:

Balancing generation and consumption as part of energy sharing
Maximum revenue generation on the intraday market with battery storages
Flexibility trading day-ahead and intraday, taking into account local self-consumption optimization and peak load capping in the application field of networked charging stations

The flexibility plant can be connected to customer or end customer control systems via various interfaces. We also implement third-party interfaces for this purpose. Furthermore, we provide communication channels via classic remote control protocols (IEC 60870-5-104) or via a REST API provided by us.

The software functionalities at a glance

A standardized modular software system is used to link extensive functionalities depending on the intended use of the flexibility plant.

Forecasts

PV and wind feed-in
temperature forecasts
general electrical consumption
heat demand
mobility demand (in development)

Flexibility

Forecast
Aggregation
Management

Management

Plant management
Operational planning
Operational management

An overview of the flexibility plant cycle

Forecast generation: self-learning, location-specific generation of forecasts for electricity, heat and mobility requirements
Flexibility forecast: Forecast of the control capability of an individual energy asset (flexibility)
Aggregation of flexibility forecasts: Merging the flexibility forecasts of individual assets or groups of assets
Schedule generation: Schedule determination based on the customer's desired target value(s) - Combination of local and higher-level optimizations
Schedule disaggregation: Splitting of overall schedules down to the individual system on the basis of system-specific flexibility
Schedule management: implementation of schedules by controlling energy assets
Operational monitoring: Automated monitoring of schedule fulfillment and reporting of deviations