Infrastructure

New developments and innovative technologies require acceptance testing before being integrated into existing systems. A testing environment that provides realistic settings and component interactions ensures optimal feedback and insights for developers and manufacturers. The laboratory facilities of the Fraunhofer Center Digital Energy enable integration and testing across multiple technologies and OEMs. This allows for practical testing, inspections, and trial runs without risking adverse effects within the public energy supply system.

The available laboratory equipment represents a quasi-real image of the energy infrastructure of current and future power grid operators (primary, secondary, control room, information and communication technology). Close cooperation with the Institute for High Voltage Equipment and Grids, Digitalization and Energy Economics (IAEW) at RWTH Aachen University ensures extensive and directly operational research infrastructure for measuring, simulating, certifying, and testing energy technology components and systems for research projects.

Within the Fraunhofer Center for Digital Energy, this environment enables both application-oriented research and development as well as independent testing and verification going beyond current approaches. IT security tools, penetration tests, patches, network technologies and novel concepts can be tested (such as data spaces, SSI, quantum communication, blockchain, or high-performance computing) directly within an operational system, prior to actual implementation within the energy supply infrastructure.