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Scientists from Munich University of Applied Sciences are investigating the power grid of the future in the living lab of the research project “Fuchstal leuchtet”.

In future, electricity will be supplied almost entirely from renewable sources such as wind and sun. Battery storage systems will increasingly balance fluctuating generation and consumption. How this can work is being investigated on a smaller scale in the distribution grid section of the “Fuchstal leuchtet” living lab. This section can be disconnected from the large interconnected grid and then forms a so-called island grid. By the end of the research project, four wind turbines and a battery storage system are to supply the villages of Asch and Leeder in the municipality of Fuchstal with energy for a limited time. Operating strategies are also being developed to supply the municipality during a longer outage of the interconnected grid.

To investigate the behaviour of the individual plants, field tests are first carried out without the municipality. To ensure that these run safely and normal operation can be resumed afterwards, the tests are accompanied by risk management: risks are identified, assessed and backed by measures.

In an island grid, generation and consumption must always be in balance, otherwise the grid collapses. To investigate this balance of power and energy, a virtual model of the living lab was created. It is used to plan the test procedures. The model is checked against the measurement data from the field tests. It is then to be used to investigate operation with the municipality – with the aim of developing operating strategies for a longer grid outage and recommendations for the entire interconnected grid.

We will be happy to arrange an interview with Konstantin Wagner and Prof. Georg Kerber or to provide more detailed scientific information on the field tests.

Further information: The conference paper on risk management (in German) is available in the EnInnov 2026 proceedings and on our publications page.

Together with Munich University of Applied Sciences, Augsburg Technical University of Applied Sciences and TU Braunschweig, the municipality of Fuchstal successfully applied for the project “Fuchstal leuchtet”. It builds on the “Energiezukunft Fuchstal” concept and is funded by the German federal government.

The energy transition is fundamentally changing the electricity supply. With the phase-out of conventional power plants, which currently provide most of the ancillary services for grid stability, and the expansion of small converter-based generation plants, the behaviour of the power grid is changing. It must therefore be clarified whether a grid supplied exclusively by power converters can be operated stably in practice.

As winner of the German Sustainability Award, the municipality of Fuchstal largely supplies itself with renewable energy from its own wind turbines, solar parks, a battery storage system and a heat storage tank with a power-to-heat plant. This infrastructure makes Fuchstal the ideal place for the research question. At the start of the project, all cooperation and industry partners met for a kick-off at the Energiezukunft Fuchstal.

“The technical goal of the project ‘Fuchstal leuchtet’ is the stable emergency supply of the municipality of Fuchstal. The municipality and the heat storage tank are supplied by the interaction of the PV systems, the wind turbines and the battery storage system with the grid-forming inverter.”

“We are also pleased that our municipality can contribute to the success of the energy transition throughout Germany, not only locally but also by addressing this research question.”