Regional marketing mechanisms for industrial energy flexibility enabled by service-oriented IT platforms

An increasing number of renewable energy sources driven by ambitious sustainability efforts is both changing and challenging electricity systems worldwide. Successfully dealing with a variable and highly decentralized electricity supply associated with the rising share of renewable energy sources will be crucial in the near future. This paper investigates the potential of information technology (IT) for regional marketing of energy flexibility from the machine level in factories to the electricity-grid level. In this context, energy flexibility describes the capability to react quickly and cost-efficiently to alternating electricity availability. Based on a literature review of regional marketing mechanisms, existing concepts of IT platforms, and current real-world model regions, this paper aims to apply a holistic research approach to better understand the challenges regarding the energy transition on a regional level and corresponding requirements for IT platforms used for flexibility marketing. The approach allows to identify relevant key challenges and flexibility marketing use cases, attributing core importance to underlying production processes. In particular, target processes for respective use cases are derived based on a description of current regional marketing of demand flexibility. Successful implementation of target processes is required to provide regional energy flexibility via IT platforms. A comparison between current processes and target processes finally allows defining the need for change and development, e.g., of new intelligent interfaces, already during the conceptual test of new IT platforms. The introduced research approach was applied to one exemplary use case within the energy-flexible model region Augsburg of the Kopernikus project SynErgie, Germany. The paper especially illustrates that service-oriented IT platforms simplify the communication process between the relevant players in energy flexibility marketing.