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In 2010 construction will begin in the T-City on an intelligent power supply system, a “Smart Grid,” which will synchronize energy consumption and production.

T-Systems and Technische Werke Friedrichshafen (TWF) (Friedrichshafen Public Utilities) are currently supplying the Oberhof and Windhag districts with intelligent power and gas meters (Smart Meters). The digital meters send the consumption data to TWF via radio communication or DSLDSL

Digital Subscriber Line. A technology that provides mainly domestic users and small businesses with greater transmission bandwidths via conventional copper-wire telephone lines. See also ADSL.

. Software processes the information and makes it available to the customer on a personalized Internet portal – and the information can be updated every 15 minutes if desired. This gives customers a good overview of their energy consumption at all times and allows them to modify their energy consumption behavior accordingly.

Integration of the Smart Meter marks the T-City Friedrichshafen’s first step towards a Smart Grid. The objective is to equip power supply systems with communication solutions in order to better attune supply and demand to each other. This is especially necessary because managing our power supply networks is becoming increasingly complex: On the one hand, more and more households are feeding their own energy from solar or wind power plants into the network, and on the other hand the amount of renewable energies is increasing at the big energy providers as well. However, these numbers are difficult to calculate. That is because the amount of energy (if any) that the photovoltaic plant and the three small river-water power plants in Oberhof produces depends fully on the weather. Such serious fluctuations in production could be balanced out by the intelligent grid, which would combine central and local producers in a virtual power station. Customer will also benefit from changed behavior in the future, according to Stefan Söchtig, CEO of TWF and T-City project manager for the city: “For example, by rewarding customers with a low rate for deferring some of their energy consumption to off-peak hours. This will also be beneficial to the environment because then fewer plants with high CO2 emissions will need to be deployed during peak-load hours.”