The Urban Tech Project, funded by the European Union, supports the co-operation of companies looking for new products and services with start-ups developing matching technologies. Innovations in the area of Healthtech, Smart City and Greentech are supported in the development and piloting of joint projects.

Easy Smart Grid successfully applied for a challenge by Weider Wärmetechnik from Austria with an initiative to mobilize the inherent value potential of Weider’s heat pumps: As the heat produced by the heat pump is stored in a hot water buffer, the time when the heat pump operates and consumes electric energy can be shifted over several hours. This means the heat pump can adapt to the availability of renewable energy from PV or wind and perform a function for which otherwise a battery would be needed. A heat pump empowered to act like a “virtual battery” thus can save the substantial cost of a real one. Easy Smart Grid develops the technology to implement this functionality within individual houses, which beyond existing solutions can also be migrated to and applied at higher scale in local energy communities and at grid level.

After jointly developing the necessary software extension, the partners now pilot the technology both in a reference implementation and in exchanges with application experts. If market attractiveness is confirmed, as a next step the actual offering this new solution is intended.