Website: www.easysg.de
Country: Germany
Founding year: 2014
Key technologies: Technologies for climate-friendly living quarters, isolated grids, and industry-specific applications
Team size: 4
Easy Smart Grid develops a smart grid technology intended to assist the transition to renewable energy. The company’s system allows a reduction of total systems cost by integrating low-cost virtual storage from demand-side flexibility and reducing complexity and cost of system coordination, enabling users to avail an increase in renewable energy share and cheap electricity cost.
About the Solution: Easy Smart Grid for heat pumps and EV charging
URBAN TECH Challenge: Enable heat pumps and EV chargers to become “virtual PV batteries”
Challenge owner: Weider Wärmeumpen GmbH (Austria)
Sector: Smart City
Funding received: up to 27000 EUR
Type: Software
Customer focus: B2B
Target Market: Global
The general concept of the Solution is based on the fact that shifting the operation time of a heat pump (which is possible if it works against a hot water-tank that ensures customer comfort independently of heat pump operation) has the same effect on the electric grid around it as installing a battery: At the original operating time, it consumes less (i.e., discharges a battery), at the new operation time more than before (i.e., charges a battery).
This “virtual battery” creates similar value as a “real” one would, but avoids its investment cost. A similar value can be derived from shifting the charging time of an electric vehicle.
The concept consists of a heat pump equipped with an algorithm that responds to a dynamic price by shifting heat pump operation towards times of low prices (it does this by predicting both future heat consumption and future prices). This heat pump is combined with a “price generating algorithm” that can be adapted to different needs, thus optimizing for different objectives. In the simplest case, the heat pump minimizes load at the grid connection point by operating at times when other loads are not active.
