Control, Automation & Operation Management

In the business area Control, Automation and Operation Management with the competence centres "Energy Management and Control", "Automation of Energy Systems and Plants" and "Monitoring and Artificial Intelligence", we develop new solutions for the transformation of today's energy systems from a vertical to a cross-sectoral architecture. This requires profound changes in operation management, control and automation at the plant and component level as well as at the system level. This transformation will only be possible with the help of increasing (distributed) intelligence, networking and digitalisation. Thus, the research and development of flexible operation, control and monitoring strategies based on distributed, intelligent and digitally networked subsystems are inevitable for the desired implementation of sector coupling. At the same time, new, integrated concepts for automation and control technology are needed that make it possible to coordinate and monitor the operation of cross-sectoral energy systems efficiently, safely and flexibly. We address these challenges through a holistic research approach that combines new methods of artificial intelligence with modern concepts of automation, control and instrumentation. In the field of monitoring and artificial intelligence, we research innovative AI and monitoring methods for various fields of energy infrastructures and geothermal energy systems. We develop and use AI-based applications with a focus on the use of methods for the analysis of large data sets for feature extraction, automatic pattern recognition, anomaly detection and predictive maintenance.