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SmartQuart

Self-sufficient smart districts

SmartQuart is an initiative involving a consortium of 11 partners. Three interconnected smart cities are being built and scheduled to be finished by 2025. The districts showcase the pinnacle of smart, sustainable living.

"I am pleased that the first real-world laboratory of the Energiewende is already starting work. Our real-world laboratories are innovation projects on an industrial scale. We use them to develop and test technologies that we need for our ambitious energy and climate policy goals."
Peter Altmaier
German Minister of Economics

Launched in January 2020, SmartQuart is known as the first real-world laboratory of the energy transition and is brought about by a consortium of 11 partners. Due to its potential to test and refine innovative technology and systems pivotal to the energy transition, the project is supported by the German Ministry of Economics. By connecting three smart districts, the initiative aims to show how with integrated and innovative systems, districts can become truly self-sufficient and massively reduce their carbon footprint.

The three smart districts will be interconnected digitally via a Smart-Hub with multi-energy design, meaning they incorporate heat, electricity and hydrogen. gridX, the only startup in the consortium, connects all buildings, distributed energy resources and households via our robust cloud infrastructure and our cascaded energy management. Our XENON platform is responsible for the smart energy management within and between the smart districts and is used to integrate assets and locally match energy supply and demand.

Three connected smart districts

The district in Kaisersesch, known as the hydrogen quarter, will showcase how renewable energy for heat, electricity and industry can be intelligently coupled with the mobility sector using hydrogen technologies. Our gridBox has already been installed in this quarter, enabling the smart integration of energy assets. Essen – the urban quarter – will act as a model for large sustainable cities of the future.

And lastly Bedburg, an area with typical small-town density and 130 residential units, will source local energy from solar panels and wind farms. Our initial real-time simulations of the district aimed to refine the energy management system design before the systems go live. The two-day simulations proved the efficacy of our communication protocol via our energy API and that a healthy balance between real-time and future control can be reached. The intelligent energy management system is able to precisely adapt energy feed-in and import to maximize self-sufficiency, minimize costs and avoid grid overloads.

Watch the interview from E-World between Dr. Jan Bergholz and Dr. Thomas Pollok to learn more about the technical setup and significance of the SmartQuart initiative.

You can also check out our webinar and blog post on SmartQuart to learn more.

34% reduction in maximum power feedin
during Bedburg simulations
7% cost savings
due to feed-in power management during Bedburg simulations
20% reduction in maximum peak demand
during Bedburg simulations
3-4% cost savings
with peak power management during Bedburg simulations

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