Joint Conference Promotes nfdi4energy Consortium for Energy Systems Research

The nfdi4energy consortium – short for National Research Data Infrastructure for Interdisciplinary Energy Systems Research – aims to improve communication and exchange of data such as software in energy systems research. The Joint Science Conference (GWK) is initially funding the project with up to ten million euros for five years, following the recommendation of the expert panel of the German Research Foundation (DFG).

At RWTH, energy expert Professor Antonello Monti, who heads the Automation of Complex Power Systems (ACS) Institute, is involved in E.ON ERC. Other partners include the project-coordinating Department of Computing Science at the University of Oldenburg, the OFFIS Institute for Computer Science, researchers at the University of Freiburg, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies e.V. (IASS) in Potsdam, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the Sociological Research Institute Göttingen (SOFI), and the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB) in Hannover. The Reiner Lemoine Institute in Berlin and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology in Sankt Augustin are also participating.

Research data is generated in science in a wide variety of forms and in large quantities – from historical weather data to predicted parameters of technical facilities and infrastructures to software systems. A National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) has been established to make such data more accessible, to set standards, and to establish the data in the respective specialist community. The NFDI consists of consortia that provide infrastructural facilities for research data throughout Germany. nfdi4energy focuses on data and software in energy system research, which are necessary, among other things, for research on forward-looking technologies related to the energy transition and for the digitization of energy systems. This data is to be made usable and reusable in the best possible way from the initial project idea through discourse with society to transfer to industry or politics.