Transforming Energy Systems: The Role of Green Hydrogen and IoT

Empirical Study

The present bottleneck in fossil fuel supply and subsequent increase in energy prices underline the necessity to advance the ongoing energy transitions in Germany and the Arab countries. This implies that further options to decarbonise national energy systems need to be researched. This tandem project of AGYA members Dr. Djamel Djenouri and Dr. Marc Ringel focusses on technical advances on both, the supply and the demand side: Promoting green hydrogen as 'new' energy carrier on the supply side and Internet of Things (IoT)-based solutions increasing energy savings on the demand side.

New Energy Supplier and Savings

Recent technical advances seem promising for driving the global energy transitions: On the energy demand side, technologies such as the IoT, wireless communications and networking, advanced machine learning are revolutionizing the way to save energy. On the supply side, the use of renewable energies to produce carbon-free 'green hydrogen' promises to open up a new supply source. This projects aims at deepening insights into both options.

Energy Saving Policies Requires Involvement of Consumers

Regarding energy use feedback on the demand side, existing technologies focus on energy performance and are based on real-time monitoring, data collection, and actuation. Recent studies indicate that the use of simple energy monitoring and automation systems does not spur energy-saving actions by consumers, who tend to either reject new technologies or minimize their use to preserve their data and privacy. Nonetheless, considerable energy saving potential exists on the demand side in many European and Arab countries as reported in several studies, which puts demand-side energy efficiency at the heart of the ongoing energy transformation trends. It is therefore vital to have the consumer in the loop for any energy saving policy implementation. Incentive measures are important to stimulate the consumers’ collaboration, and it is particularly vital to guarantee that the data will be collected securely and will be used for the agreed purpose while preserving their privacy.

Egypt as Partner for Green Hydrogen Supply 

In the second strand of this project, the AGYA members Djamel Djenouri and Marc Ringel will investigate on the production of green hydrogen, taking Egypt as a case study as this country would potentially be the biggest supplier of green hydrogen for the European Union. The aim is to investigate expert stakeholders’ views on potential projects and survey support networks of the local population for these kind of projects. The results will be compared to a parallel survey undertaken in Germany, in cooperation with the Energy Research Group of Forschungszentrum Jülich.