Progressus supports the European climate targets for 2030 by proposing a next generation smart grid, demonstrated by the application example “smart charging infrastructure” that integrates seamlessly into the already existing concepts of smart grid architectures keeping additional investments minimal. The expected high-power requirements for ultra-fast charging stations lead to special challenges for designing and establishing an intelligent charging infrastructure. As emission-free traffic concepts are a nascent economic topic, the efficient use of charging infrastructure is still in its infancy. Thus, novel sensor types, hardware security modules, inexpensive high bandwidth technologies, and blockchain technology as part of an independent, extendable charging energy management and customer platform are researched for a charging station energy microgrid. Research of new efficient high-power voltage converters, which support bidirectional power flow and provide a new type of highly economical charging stations with connected storage and metering platform to locally monitor the grid state complements the activities. The stations are intended to exploit the grid infrastructure via broadband power line as a communication medium, removing the need for costly civil engineering activities and supplying information to the energy management solutions for utilization optimization. Smart contracts via blockchain offer a distributed framework for the proposed energy management and services platform. Furthermore, hardware security hardens the concept against direct physical attacks such as infiltration of the network by gaining access to the encryption key material even when a charging station is compromised. Progressus solutions are estimated to enable a carbon dioxide saving of 800,000 tons per year for only Germany, will secure the competitiveness of European industry and research by extending the system know-how, and will thus safeguard employment and production in Europe.

Bando:
H2020-ECSEL-2019-2-RIA

Role of the Polytechnic:
Partner

Scientific coordinator of the Polytechnic:
Prof. Maria Dicorato – DEI

SSD:
ING-IND 33 “Electrical systems for energy”