EWE has initiated a pilot project that equips 500 households with intelligent refrigerators and the Smart Home system established by Diehl AKO and their development partner.
Diehl AKO from Wangen im Allgäu has developed a special interface for the refrigerators to make them controllable and thus „intelligent“. This could be realized in co-operation with the other partner in this pilot project, BSH (Bosch und Siemens Hausgeräte). BSH is a market-leading supplier of household appliances.

What is the aim of this field test?

Due to the early nuclear phase-out, the significance of regenerative energies has increased considerably.
The exploitation of these energies depends on new technologies, which in turn depend on several factors:
Above all, the weather, season and time of day play enormous roles in the exploitation of these regenerative energies (wind, water, solar energy…). Intelligent exploitation and use of generated energy are getting more and more important.
Another important point is the storage of excess energy.

Household refrigerators and freezers, for example, can be used for energy storage.
These appliances are not cooling continuously. Rather, they are set to a certain temperature range. In the future, this temperature range could be put to intelligent use depending on their energy status in the overall network. This would allow, for example, clever use of lower new electricity rates.
In a study for the European Commission, a transfer potential of 3.5 gigawatts in Germany (approx. 6 large coal-burning power plants) has been calculated. 

This approach, so far just a theory, is now put to the test. New models for energy rates will be tested directly with the clients as well.

This large-scale test is another step towards Smart Home, the future for your home.

^{from the left. Martin Leitl-Nobl(BSH), Wolfgang Luth (Diehl Controls) and Andreas Ballhausen (EWE) show the most important components of the field test}