Energy Informatics 2015

The concept has been successful - the sixth Energy Informatics Doctoral Workshop took place in November. It offers doctoral students in computer science, who are active in their research activities within the energy industry, a suitable discussion forum and thus closes the gap between events in electrical and energy engineering and pure computer science conferences. The workshop was organised by the Oldenburg Computer Science Institute OFFIS under the umbrella of the GI Fachgruppe Energieinformatik (GI FG EI) on 10 and 11 November 2015 and took place this year at the Forschungszentrum Informatik (FZI) in Karlsruhe.

As in recent years, the focus was on the feedback for doctoral students on the content of their research projects and the contributions submitted. In an extensive review process, specialist articles were revised and improved with the advice of one member of the programme committee each. In this way, the doctoral students were able to gain valuable insights for their further work. A selection of the best contributions will also be published in a special issue of the journal it - information technology.

Against the background of an increasing decentralization of power supply and the associated fluctuating feed-in of electrical energy into the power grid, IT plays an essential role in shaping the future energy supply system. The subject of the study are suitable information systems, control techniques and architectural designs for the intelligent integration of the components into the network as well as concepts for the sustainable redesign of the supply system.

Lecturers from the TU Vienna, the Austrian Institute of Technology, the fortiss Institute in Munich, the Technical University Berlin, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the Research Centre for Computer Science in Karlsruhe, the KTH in Stockholm and OFFIS presented new ideas and concepts in the field of smart grids on two days of the event. The topics discussed included IT issues in the area of demand side management, new forecasting methods for electrical loads and their flexibility, the optimization of charging processes for batteries in electric vehicles to extend the service life of these batteries, software architecture issues in the smart grid and the development of prototyping approaches to support algorithms in the smart grid context.

The next PhD workshop will be held in September 2016 together with the Alpen-Adria-Universität in connection with the D-A-CH Conference Energy Informatics 2016 in Klagenfurt.