Regardless of whether you are talking about realizing a 2,000-watt society, phasing out nuclear power or global warming, the contribution of energy savings through more efficient use of energy or sufficiency accounts for more than half of the solution in each case! Energy efficiency is therefore of great importance for our future.

The Energy Efficiency division is involved in applied research and development in the areas of networked energy systems (smart energy), energy management and energy concepts. Optimizing individual technologies can lead to significant progress in terms of efficiency and emissions. However, additional, sometimes significantly greater, improvements can often be achieved by cleverly integrating different processes or combining different technologies.
 

• How can small and medium-sized enterprises be motivated to implement energy efficiency measures? Interdisciplinary project Negawatt instead of Megawatt: Increasing the implementation rate of energy efficiency projects in Switzerland (see website Negawatt statt Megawatt).
• Smart Energy: Integration of renewable energies into distribution networks. How should storage and production facilities be distributed and controlled to make the networks as stable and fault-tolerant as possible (smart grid, microgrids, resilience, demand side management, storage management, energy self-sufficiency)?
• Short and medium-term demand forecasts and production forecasts for electricity and heat.
• Adaptive predictive controls for the optimal integration of various energy systems (adaptive model predictive control MPC). Possible energy systems include, for example, photovoltaic systems, photovoltaic thermal systems, solar collectors, heat pumps, thermal storage, electrical storage, combined heat and power plants, fuel cells, wood heating systems.

• Simulation of energy systems and development of special tools for planning (including with Matlab, Homer, Labview and R).
• Planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of energy efficiency projects and energy efficiency programs.
• Demonstrating opportunities for regional value creation through the realization of energy efficiency measures and the use of renewable energies.
• Energy concepts for buildings and sites, taking into account ecological and economic aspects (partly in collaboration with other institutes).
• Energy balances and potential assessments, procedural concepts for increasing the degree of energy self-sufficiency or for realizing a 2,000-watt society for municipalities, cities and energy regions in Switzerland.
• Energy-saving contracting (neutral advice and support).