In order to achieve the nationally and internationally agreed climate protection goals, it is necessary to convert the energy supply to renewable sources in all sectors. In the years to come, restructuring will have to take place, especially in the areas of mobility and heating. The implementation of the national energy transition, taking sector coupling into account, is a long-term process that is currently being delayed due to the slowdown in grid expansion. In individual regions, local initiatives are trying to set up a self-sufficient renewable supply for electricity, heat and mobility needs and are thus working on the implementation of the energy transition in a decentralized manner. One example of this is the intelligent energy system in Dörpum (IES Dörpum), where a pilot network for five households and two farms is to be set up in summer 2022. With a biogas and several photovoltaic systems, a completely renewable self-sufficiency should be made possible; A load management system and battery storage also enable loads to be shifted.
However, decentralized self-sufficient energy systems do not necessarily lead to economically efficient solutions for the energy system in Germany. Infrastructure projects for the expansion of the German and European transmission grid and thus a Europe-wide networking of the energy supply are also being pushed ahead. A classification of the local efforts in the overall systemic context on the basis of modeling and optimization is therefore essential. Within the framework of two workshops planned within the project, local and national stakeholders will be involved in order to incorporate different perspectives and requirements into the research project. Whether and to what extent local and national trends contradict each other and how regional initiatives such as the IES Dörpum can successfully link regional and national requirements for the resilient and cost-efficient implementation of the energy transition is to be the subject of the research project OptIES Dörpum. The aim of the project is to derive concrete recommendations for action for an optimal development of the electrical and thermal energy supply from a local and overall system perspective using the example of the region under consideration. The open source and open data strategy enables direct transfer to other regions and can thus close an existing research gap in the long term.