What is EEBUS? 2022 - EEBus - Empowering the digitalisation of Energy transition.

Our mission

An increasing share of volatile renewable energy production in combination with a growing electrification of the mobility and heating sector, is exerting more and more stress to the power grid. Production and consumption can only be aligned, if relevant actors, systems and devices can communicate with each other. Therefore, a cross-domain and manufacturer-independent communication is needed, from grid to device level.

The purpose of EEBUS is the development and standardisation of such a communication and required interfaces to allow for the interconnection between energy management relevant devices as well as corresponding control systems. EEBUS empowers the digitalisation of energy transition by ensuring compliance with physical and grid-initiated constraints at the grid connection and thus supports a stable grid operation. This allows energy-related and manufacturer-specific business models to develop, without endangering the grid situation.

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Perfect transparency of energy flows

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Avoidance of peak loads and grid bottlenecks

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Use of flexibility on the supply and demand side

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Foundation for development of energy-related business models

EEBUS Solutions

Today’s energy world is facing different needs and demands from multiple perspective, starting with energy supply, over to grid operation ending with local energy management. EEBUS enables the harmonisation of energy flows and efficiency by establishing a standardised communication interface for seamless communication among devices and systems in the world of energy management.

Painpoints of the Industry and Solutions of EEBUS:

DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM OPERATOR (DSO)

Lacks control of processes on the premises (commonly denoted as “behind the meter/grid connection point”)
Lacks insight and prognoses about decentralised consumption and production
Faces increasing instability of the grid

Our solutions

Solution EEBUS:

EEBUS allows for capacity management at the grid connection point whereby signals from the grid enjoy prioritised significance in case of impending grid instability. In its grid specific use cases EEBUS considers country-specific regulations and requirements in terms of security and functionality. Furthermore, the DSO gets insights in current energy flows at the grid connection point as well as information about connected devices inside the building.

ENERGY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (EMS) MANUFACTURER

Different domains must interact properly "behind the meter" and act in a grid-compatible manner
Energy management, which is in the responsibility of the customer, must aggregate all connected devices on building level
Need for cross-domain single protocol for EMS to remain affordable

Our solutions

Solution EEBUS:

As a cross-domain standard that is intrinsically downward compatible and yet accepts the challenges of new applications inside the building, EEBUS provides solutions from self-consumption optimisation up to the usage of dynamic tariffs while considering physical and grid-initiated limitations.

DEVICE MANUFACTURER

Manufacturers need to participate in the new, increasingly digitalised and complex energy world
There are a multitude of regulations that overburden the manufacturers
Losses in the end customer’s comfort must be minimised

Our solutions

Solution EEBUS:

EEBUS provides a standardised plug&play solution for applications around energy management and the grid connection point: device manufacturers can make their devices part of a larger energy eco-system and offer new services.

EEBUS enables the monitoring of and access to energy relevant data.

Member benefits

As a member of the EEBUS initiative, companies benefit from the opportunity to integrate their own demands and requirements in the process of use case development prior to its release as a standard. The early involvement within the initiative allows for an active participation in the technical development of the EEBUS standard and to acquire a deep understanding of the concept of energy management and the use of EEBUS specifications. In addition, members benefit from first hand insights in standardisation activities on European level as well as from the cross-industry networking opportunities within the initiative. In collaboration with other members, companies can test the interoperability of their products within the initiatives testing events and facilities to ensure market-readiness. Finally, the EEBUS membership stands for front runners in the fast-growing market environment related to energy transition as well as active contributors in the effort of decarbonisation and climate protection.

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Active participation in working groups

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Information access to ongoing standardisation activities on European level

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Cross-industry networking related to digitalisation of energy transition

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Interoperable and market-ready products

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Become a front runner reputation

Become a member

Cross Industry Network –
more than just a technical standard

The cross-industry network plays a central role in the energy transition and thus within EEBUS. Through the constant exchange of individual information, a common understanding is developed, creating the basis for new use cases and business models. Solutions around capacity and tariff management involve multiple players and a wide variety of industry partners. An efficient solution can only come about if companies either define a solution bilaterally with the most important partners, which is usually very time-consuming, or follow an established standard that considers cross-industrial application, such as EEBUS. In this cross-industry network manufacturers can very easily enter the solution business.

„Since our founding in 2012, EEBUS members have come from a variety of industries: I am convinced that this cross-industry approach is the main reason for our success as the communication interface standard for the low-voltage grid – it is impossible to imagine sector coupling in the context of energy transition if the interests of all sectors involved are not well aligned! “

Dr. Robert Böhm

Managing Director, EEBus e.V.

Why EEBUS?

Effective communication between different stakeholders requires more than just standardised data exchange: the communicating parties must also be aligned with respect to content and communication flow process via the same use case applications. By “communication interface” we refer to this combination of data model and transport protocol required for the data exchange as well as relevant use case descriptions.

EEBUS standardises this required communication interface at and behind the grid connection point to allow for the development of energy-related and manufacturer-specific business models that are compliant with physical limits at the grid connection and thus ensure stable low-voltage grid operation. Such communication interface to be successful and future-proof must fulfil several key requirements:

Warum standardisiert?

Um massenmarkttaugliche Serienprodukte zu ermöglichen

Technically standardised

EEBUS standardises the communication interface at and behind the grid connection point and herewith ensures compliance with physical limits at the grid connection. This ensures stable low-voltage grid operation while allowing for the development of energy-related and manufacturer-specific business models.

Easy installation: plug & play on the premises

EEBUS provides an automated plug & play mechanism without the need for specialists’ costly configuration tools to integrate devices into an overall eco-system. This will path the way to a broader acceptance for energy optimised setups.

Holistic application

EEBUS enables a holistic application by its use case specifications employing the domain unspecific data model SPINE (Smart Premises Interoperable Neutral-Message Exchange).

Irrespective of device type or stakeholder role, it is the generic data model allowing for a broad range of use cases. Furthermore, information symmetry is implicitly guaranteed – there is no single point of information and control: any device can exchange energy related data via its implemented use case(s), irrespective of the underlying system architecture.

Dynamically flexible

The EEBUS data model SPINE has been designed from the very beginning to allow for a maximum degree of flexibility. Its modular and flexible design is a pre-requisite for consensus building among the various stakeholders.

Reliability

Even the technologically most advanced and economically most feasible solutions must be reliable when it comes to grid relevant implementations. EEBUS ensures reliability with respect to its SPINE data model in the following manner: use cases depending on a reliable connection implement a fail-safe/watchdog mechanism – if the communication behind the grid connection fails, the heartbeat mechanism of the EEBUS ensures that the devices operate in a fail-safe mode and return to a normal operation as soon as the communication is re-established.

Security compliance for critical infrastructure

In principle, any transport protocol can be used for transmission of the EEBUS SPINE data: EEBUS members have deliberately chosen an IP approach and developed the Smart Home IP (SHIP) transport protocol to be best-in-class with respect to cyber security and energy networking inside buildings.

For finding and networking devices, EEBUS applies mDNS/DNS-SD while secure communication is enabled through the TLS communication standard as well as elliptic curves. Via SHIP EEBUS has implemented remote certificate update procedures that can be applied during ongoing device operation without requiring user interaction.

Finally, a trust level mechanism allows to pre-configure which other devices shall be trustfully interconnected via public key acceptance procedure.

Broad support

The data structure serves as a basis for the use cases that select and combine required elements in a modular principle: it is then these use cases that are agreed upon and standardised in domain specific as well as cross-domain working groups of the EEBUS initiative.

A strong and powerful communication interface must of course be backed-up by a broad support base. Within EEBUS we are fulfilling this requirement via an open cross-sector consortium of all relevant stakeholders that constantly develop our standard and its manifestation in international standardisation bodies.

EEBUS technology fulfils all the above key requirements and is already available in various serial products such as charging stations, heat pumps and energy management systems. For detailed information regarding the key features of EEBUS, please have a look at our white paper here:

DOWNLOAD WHITE PAPER

Technology

Clean system architecture – in order to guarantee maximum flexibility, the EEBUS architecture is based on the SGAM architecture model. The EEBUS communication stack is using widely applied IP communication technologies. Today’s solutions are realized on IP but the data model itself can be freely used with other transport media. Standard based security mechanism such as TLS 1.2, commonly used cipher suites, several elliptic curves together with the certificate update mechanism guarantee maximum security – now and in the future.

The data model itself represents the value of the EEBUS system which offers a Swiss knife for interoperable connectivity of all kinds of devices within the value chain from DSO/EMP to device level.

Self-discovery mechanism for the exchange of data – devices can communicate their self-description through M2M readable information that even may be changed over runtime. This key element of the EEBUS architecture enables the system to network devices automatically and request the device’s capabilities through EEBUS use case discovery. This unique discovery mechanism leads to self-updating systems with trustable functionality of the connected devices without any ifs or buts.

Freely definable data structure – manufacturers can define the data structure to describe their device by themself. No restrictions by the data model add maximum flexibility to the product development. Subscription to data or functions – to enable an efficient communication within the EEBUS system, devices can subscribe on data elements that may change. The functional abonnements subscription informs your device about new features of other devices.