Germany's future electricity system is faced with the challenge of ensuring an affordable and stable supply of electricity with an ever-increasing proportion of fluctuating electricity producers. Due to the increasing volatility, the need to adapt the energy demand to the available energy supply is growing. This creates new challenges for companies to adapt their energy requirements quickly and at a low cost. Under the project management of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Alexander Sauer (University of Stuttgart and Fraunhofer IPA) and deputy project manager Prof. Dr.-Ing. Gunther Reinhart (Technical University of Munich and Fraunhofer IGCV), the VDI technical committee »Energy Flexible Factories« is therefore concerned with defining and structuring the terms and framework conditions related to energy flexible production.  

A uniform information basis is required to align industrial processes to the new challenges of energy-flexible factory operation. For this purpose, the VDI Technical Committee "Energy Flexible Factories" was founded to develop and, above all, applying a uniform understanding and system of key figures for energy flexible factory operation (e.g., for the marketing of energy flexibility measures) to orient companies to a volatile energy supply and to maintain a continuous technical exchange. For this purpose, a series of guidelines are being developed in the form of VDI 5207, for which the first sheet will be published in the course of 2019. Sheets two and three will be prepared immediately afterward.

The committee will deal with the following topics, among others:

• Definitions
• Fundamentals of energy flexibility (e.g., key figures)
• Classification of operational energy flexibility
• Factors influencing energy flexibility measures
• Evaluation of energy flexibility (e.g., aggregated key figures)