Essen, 18 March 2024 – At this year’s Light + Building, technology group Schneider Electric presented a new energy management solution with an EEBUS interface. The Home Energy Management System (HEMS) enables the intelligent distribution of energy flows in residential buildings and regulates the connection to the grid operator. The manufacturer-independent EEBUS communication protocol is used for the application areas.
Challenges of § 14a: From 1 January 2024, large electrical energy consumers such as heat pumps, air conditioners, storage units and wallboxes must be controllable by the energy supplier. This will optimise grid utilisation and enable consumption to be reduced in the event of overload. As a reward, end customers can expect a significant reduction in their electricity bill.
In-house development of the EEBUS software stack: Schneider Electric engineers developed the EEBUS software stack in-house and successfully tested it for interoperability in the Living Lab Cologne. Sebastian Wolfsteiner, energy management expert at Schneider Electric, points out: “EEBUS solves the problem of providing an interoperable, reliable and updatable interface for all relevant devices from different industries. This is not trivial and is a challenge”. The necessary specifications for this interface are available on the EEBUS website. Wolfsteiner: “Our engineers have been able to show that companies and developers can integrate EEBUS without any problems”.
Taking advantage of dynamic electricity tariffs: In addition to interoperability, the integration of innovative new pricing models also plays an important role. With dynamic electricity tariffs, households can see when electricity is particularly cheap and use it accordingly. This important building block for the energy transition is an extension of the functionality that completes prosumer solutions and makes them independent of the weather, for example. Schneider Electric is already developing the native integration of such dynamic tariffs into energy management systems, so that favourable exchange rates can be used fully automatically and households can benefit from further cost savings.
The introduction of a further EEBUS stack that is suitable for series production is an important step towards making EEBUS suitable for mass production.