The “Research Campus” funding initiative

With the funding initiative “Research Campus – public-private partnership for innovation”, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research supports large-scale and long-term approaches to cooperation between science and industry. Thus, complex and multidimensional research fields with high research risk and special potential for leap innovations. The close proximity in a research campus helps to balance the different interests of each partner and to unite for a common research and transfer approach. So future applications are already thought about in the design of research projects. This facilitates later the successful implementation of research results into new products, processes, and services. In addition, the research campuses engage in higher education or the education of young scientists and thus satisfy the need for skilled personnel in our economy.

The Research Campus “Mobility2Grid”

The central idea of the research campus “Mobility2Grid” is the integration of commercial and residential electric vehicles in decentralized energy networks. The urban neighborhood development should contribute to the realization of the energy and transport revolution. The objective is to realize the supply of electricity, heat, and transport more affordable, reliable, and sustainable by means of new technological options and the involvement of civil society. The EUREF Campus in Berlin serves as a test and reference quarter to describe the basic parameters of a decentralized utility industry for sustainable urban development. In six topic areas, new fields of technology and innovative business models are opened as well as research on the acceptance and promotion of young scientists are practiced. A cross-sectional field is dedicated to the operation and exploitation of the results in a jointly organized company.

The “Grid integration” and “Automated charging and driving” work packages:

In the second funding phase, research will be conducted into the transformation of mobility and the transport system, taking into account the energy system, the development of feasible concepts for low-CO2 transport, and a city that is low in air pollutants and noise, but also safe. All this serves to gain knowledge through concrete application examples as well as the scalability of the overall system. The ultimate goal of the alliance is the development of efficient and networked systems for the climate-neutral city, implying the challenges in the transport as well as the energy sector.

We, the Technische Universität Berlin (DAI-Labor), will be involved in the II. funding phase especially in the following key topics:

• In the research core “Grid Integration”, novel optimization algorithms for the combined allocation and control of (partially) autonomous vehicles and automated charging infrastructure will be developed with the goal of increasing flexibility for the stability of distribution and arial grids.
• In the research core “Automated Driving and Charging”, a tool for planning charging infrastructure is being further developed that can plan and optimize automated charging infrastructure taking into account charging demand, economic efficiency, local boundary conditions, and charging management