Transforming the Grid: How Siemens Energy Manages the Energy Trilemma - MATLAB & Simulink
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    Transforming the Grid: How Siemens Energy Manages the Energy Trilemma

    Jens Dietrich, Siemens Energy Grid Solutions

    Join Jens Dietrich, head of transmission software platform development at Siemens Energy Grid Solutions, as he discusses the acceleration of the energy transition to renewable power. With governments striving to meet carbon dioxide targets, Siemens is expanding its capabilities to handle a growing number of power projects annually. Discover how Siemens is leveraging state-of-the-art software development techniques and Model-Based Design to tackle the energy trilemma: balancing energy security, affordability, and sustainability. Learn about their innovative approach to digitalizing the power grid, achieving hardware independence, and enhancing automation through collaborative engineering and data integration. Explore the future of energy transmission with Siemens Energy’s tailored solutions for both onshore and offshore wind power.

    Published: 12 Sep 2024

    My name is Jens Dietrich. And I'm the head of Transmission Software Platform Development at Siemens Energy Grid Solutions in Germany. Right now, we see an acceleration in the energy transition. Governments are pushing for new offshore and onshore connection to reach their carbon dioxide targets. Therefore, we need to expand our capabilities as a manufacturer to execute from a few parallel projects per year to a dozen parallel projects per year.

    Together with my team, I'm working on an engineering ecosystem to develop power system controls for large-scale energy transmission projects. Over the past eight years, we took the latest state-of-the-art software development techniques and combined them with model-based design to rethink how we develop, test, and integrate power-energy systems.

    Limiting global warming does not really need an evolution on how we produce and consume energy. It's rather a revolution in how we do that. And this is what the energy transition is all about.

    But as often in life, one problem is not enough. We actually have to solve three interdependent problems at the same time. The scientists call that the "energy trilemma." The first problem is about energy security. The question is how can we keep the lights on in the future?

    The second question is about energy equity. Can we still afford energy in the future? And last, but not least, the energy sustainability. Are we really able to produce and consume energy without emitting any more carbon dioxide?

    For the energy transition, it's really about solving all those three problems at the same time, really in trilemma. The digitalization of the power grid requires us as a manufacturer to develop more advanced software function. And therefore, we have to digitalize our engineering ecosystem as well.

    We are thinking about qualities for a state-of-the-art engineering environment and set ourselves three important goals. And the first one is that we wanted hardware independence. The second one actually is a strong focus on system engineering. And last, but not least, we wanted to put a real strong focus on automation.

    So when we started, the first decision we took was to go with model-based design and MathWorks products. When switching to model-based design and Simulink, we put all our control engineers at the same place. To be very precise, we put them in the same git repository. So now all teams develop in the same modeling language, Simulink, and code generation details, compilers, and tool chains are handled centrally.

    Tests can be already executed while developing as model in the new setups. We have now this state of collaborative engineering, where the development extends across the borders of the organization. And now, comes a phase that we call data engineering.

    That's where we bring all those customer-specific requirements in and put them on top of the reference project line that we already have to create that final customer solution, still using the same tools and technologies that we used before. So at the end, each customer solution is really a unique and specially tailored solution with all the requirements and national regulations the customer needs.

    So especially for the onshore connection in Germany, the so-called corridor projects, which deliver the energy from the north to the industrial centers in the south. And we see the same potential and even bigger potential on the offshore side, too. The transmission capacity for HVDC offshore connections quadrupled in the last 10 years, now, with two gigawatts of transmission capacity for the latest HVDC connections. Thank you very much for having me today.

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