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Siemens is carrying out intensive research into the subject of electromobility. The Corporate Technology department and the sectors Energy and Industry of the integrated technology company are investigating both the requirements that must be met by the electric car itself and the design of the infrastructure of associated electrical networks. In particular, the researchers are concerned with energy generation and distribution, the management of traffic and energy, smart metering, power electronics, software, sensors and, of course, the electrical drives and the recovery and storage of energy.
Making the supply of energy less dependent on fossil fuels requires regenerative energy-production strategies. In the future, electrically powered vehicles could establish themselves as a mobile and flexible element within a framework of this type. An electric car is simultaneously both a means of transport and a mobile energy-storage device that can also be used as a source of energy in public networks in the medium term. Such cars could also be used as controllable loads for the fluctuating feed of wind or solar energy into a power grid - provided that the layout of the network permits such a scenario.
To this end, the energy and communications interfaces to the power grid should be standardized, so that rapid charging processes can be coordinated with little effort across the whole grid. Studies of the network infrastructure therefore make up one component of the research at Siemens and its collaborative projects with partners. Electromobility could become an element of the environmental portfolio of Siemens, which generated sales of 19 billion euros for the company in fiscal year 2008.
Siemens Energy, for example, is participating in the EDISON project (Electric vehicles in a Distributed and Integrated market using Sustainable energy and Open Networks), which is studying innovative ways of linking electric vehicles to the power supply grid in Denmark. The objective is the standardization of electrical energy-storage equipment and the development of charging and discharging technologies for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. Preliminary studies have shown that of the millions of cars in the industrial countries, over 90 percent are idle for comparatively long periods of time each day.
If these electric vehicles were equipped with appropriately powerful batteries, they could be used as an intermediate storage medium for energy, provided that a suitable infrastructure were present. As a technology partner in this project, Siemens is responsible for the coordination and delivery of key technologies, such as those that must be developed for various types of charging stations and the associated control systems in the interest of optimal utilization of the battery capacities.