Press / Newsroom

This year’s DACH+ Energy Informatics Conference 2025 took place from September 17–19 in Aachen and once again offered a diverse program featuring inspiring keynotes, scientific presentations, and interactive workshops. Researchers and industry representatives exchanged ideas on current developments in the fields of artificial intelligence, forecasting, optimization, as well as heating, cooling, and grid technologies, and discussed ways to jointly advance the energy transition.

A new study by Fraunhofer FIT and RWTH Aachen’s IAEW, commissioned by Regionetz GmbH, shows how the heat transition will reshape gas network infrastructure across the region. While overall gas demand is expected to decline, most pipelines will remain essential to serve decentralized customers until 2045. Coordinated decommissioning, the study concludes, is key to achieving a cost-efficient and sustainable heat transition.

On June 29, an IEC 61850 training session was held as part of the IEEE PowerTech 2025 conference in Kiel. Led by Fraunhofer FIT, the tutorial welcomed around 15 participants from industry and academia. It offered an introduction to IEC 61850 standards with a strong focus on hands-on configuration and practical exercises, enabling participants to apply interoperability concepts directly to modern substation automation.

The TwinEU project has officially reached its halfway point. After 18 months of collaboration, innovation, and progress, the consortium convened in Budapest for its 4th General Assembly (GA), hosted by the Budapest University of Technology and Economics and F4STER. The meeting served to review achievements so far and outline the path ahead for the remaining 18 months.

INSIEME aims to establish the Common European Energy Data Space (CEEDS) to enable secure, interoperable, and federated energy data exchange across Europe

The municipality of Schwalmtal is setting the stage for a climate-friendly and economically sustainable heating supply with its municipal heat planning initiative. On March 25, 2025, the preliminary results were presented during a special session of the Committee for Environment, Climate, and Sustainability and submitted for political discussion.

With the JUPITER AI Factory, a central pillar of Europe’s AI infrastructure is being established in Jülich. Start-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises, and industrial companies will have access to Europe’s first Exascale-class supercomputer JUPITER. The AI Factory is also open to research institutions and the public sector. Thanks to the computing power of JUPITER, which will go into operation at Forschungszentrum Jülich in the coming months, AI applications can be developed, tested, improved and scaled faster than ever before. In addition, JUPITER will also receive a specialized inference module that accelerates access to AI models via the cloud. Several leading German AI institutions have joined forces for the collaborative project, including Fraunhofer FIT.

TwinEU hosted the first public webinar/online TwInsider workshop on 6 March 2025, organised around the findings of the Deliverable 2.1, Exploring the challenges and opportunities of the adoption of digital twins in the electricity systems to discuss early project results with key external stakeholders.

The project »BEAVER« will develop modular energy management solutions through edge automation of local substations in distribution grids.

The city of Aachen commissioned the consortium, consisting of Fraunhofer FIT, IAEW of RWTH Aachen, BET, and GERTEC, under the consortium leadership of ENERKO, to carry out municipal heat planning in close coordination with the city and other regional stakeholders. The inventory analysis and energy savings potential analysis were led by FIT and IAEW as part of the Fraunhofer Center for Digital Energy.