Technology, financing and flexibility: the foundation for a successful energy transition

The energy transition requires a complex transformation. The necessary technological innovations are often accompanied by high costs and fundamental changes in business thinking and practice. In an interview with TRANSFER, Steinbeis expert Professor Dr. Dietmar Graeber explained what matters most and how energy-intensive industries in particular can successfully overcome these challenges.

Professor Graeber, you deal with the energy sector both in your teaching and research at Ulm University of Applied Sciences and in your Steinbeis enterprise. In your view, what are currently the biggest challenges in this area?

The energy transition has already moved from the expansion phase into a system phase: integration, control and flexibility play a decisive role, because high shares of renewable generation cannot be fully integrated into the existing grid infrastructure and full expansion would lead to extremely high costs.

This requires, above all, a rapid, cost-efficient smart meter rollout and market models that promote the use of flexibility for the benefit of the grid. Investment incentives for secure power plant capacity to bridge “dark lulls” are also necessary.

Your Steinbeis enterprise offers studies and consultancy services across the entire energy industry value chain. Where do you currently see the greatest need among companies, and how do you approach this in practice?

A key challenge from a corporate perspective is currently the financing of the enormous investment requirements resulting from the energy transition in the grid and generation sectors. Due to changes in the funding landscape, new, innovative financing concepts are becoming increasingly important.

In particular, hybrid revenue generation across various energy-only, capacity and flexibility markets is becoming increasingly significant. As European market integration progresses, the complexity of energy markets is also rising, creating additional demand for consultancy within the corporate sector. In my view, it is crucial for consultancy in the energy sector to take economic and technological aspects into account in a holistic manner.

Germany’s energy-intensive industry is a key sector of the economy, but it faces enormous pressure from rising energy costs, international competition and a shortage of skilled workers. What energy strategies can these companies adopt to ensure they continue to operate successfully on the international market in the future?

For energy-intensive companies, making their energy requirements more flexible is of central importance. In addition to making production facilities more energy-flexible in the strictest sense, it is often beneficial to rely on on-site generation facilities where possible and to supplement these with targeted storage solutions such as battery storage, as well as bidirectional charging infrastructure.

In the long term, the generation, long-term storage and reconversion to electricity using hydrogen could also become economically viable. At our energy-flexible university campus, the THU Energy Park, we are already demonstrating how the energy requirements of a property can be made flexible in a targeted manner through the integration of various distributed energy systems such as PV systems, electrolysers, battery storage, bidirectional wallboxes, hydrogen storage and a hydrogen-powered gas turbine.

In your opinion, which technology trends will shape the future of energy over the next five to ten years?

The current trend towards the wider adoption of battery storage will continue. The intelligent, grid-friendly control of flexible energy systems in smart grids will also play a key role in shaping the future of energy. With production costs for hydrogen systems continuing to fall, their use could also become economically attractive within the next five to ten years.