Guidehouse Supports SINTEG Program to Create Blueprints for Tomorrow's Energy System

Five years of research, 300 participating companies, numerous research institutions and municipalities, and one common goal: to research and develop solutions for tomorrow's energy system, when Germany's electricity demand will be periodically met by 100% renewable energy. This effort was made possible by the research program Smart Energy Showcase - Digital Agenda for the Energy Transition (SINTEG) funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi).

In concert with the SINTEG program, a project team led by Guidehouse together with partners AIT, ifok, OFFIS, RE-xpertise and Wuppertal Institute was contracted to identify, structure, and synthesize the results of the SINTEG program. Guidehouse and its partners leveraged the many diverse solutions developed through the SINTEG program to create transferable and scalable blueprints.

The results of the project—the blueprints—are structured into five thematic areas and provide, among others, answers to the following questions:

• How can sector coupling technologies be integrated in the energy system and how can generation and demand (from households to industrial plants) become more flexible?
• How can these new flexibility options be utilized and coordinated with the help of flexibility mechanisms, to ensure efficient and secure operation of the power system, from energy markets to congestion management, to the provision of system services?
• How can digitalzation be used to implement the solutions for tomorrow's energy system and what are the requirements for IT architecture, IT security, and standardization and interoperability of IT solutions?
• What is the role of real-world laboratories or regulatory sandboxes (that allow exemptions from the strict regulation of the energy industry) in demonstrating innovative solutions in practice?
• How can the acceptance of new solutions by citizens be increased and how can they be motivated to participate in the energy transition project as a whole?

With this project, on behalf of BMWi, Guidehouse and partners are making an important contribution to the dissemination of innovative solutions for the energy transition and facilitating the transformation of the German energy industry. The SINTEG website offers an overview of the results of the project. The full synthesis reports will be available on the website in the second quarter of 2022.