📋 Tender Overview
No energy transition without digitization: This was impressively demonstrated during State Minister Dr. Fabian Mehring's visit to LEW in Augsburg. The company operates one of the most modern control centers in Europe and also consistently relies on digitization and AI to optimize the control of its networks, but also to support municipalities with pressing challenges, for example with water level sensors to prepare for storms and floods.
"Technological pioneers in the energy sector such as LEW are crucial to ensuring that energy supply and public services in our state continue to function well in the future," said Mehring, who was the first visitor to view the company's newly completed network control center in Augsburg. "I am therefore particularly pleased that LEW, as a partner of several municipalities, was already part of my ministry's 'TwinBy' project and that we will explore further possibilities for cooperation. For the BayCode hackathons, for example, the company will send IT experts as voluntary supervisors for the participating young programmers."
The LEW distribution network (LVN) area covers Bavarian Swabia and parts of Upper Bavaria. The control, monitoring and management of the network takes place in the central control center in Augsburg. There, specialists manage LVN's high and medium voltage networks and ensure a safe and reliable power supply around the clock. However, this task is becoming an ever greater challenge: on the supply side, the number of decentralized, volatile feed-in generators such as photovoltaic systems and wind turbines is constantly increasing. And the demand side is also facing major changes with electric vehicles, electric heating, local storage and more flexible loads. Households and companies are increasingly becoming "prosumers", i.e. acting equally as producers and consumers. The challenge is thus becoming an opportunity for Bavaria as a digital location.
Electricity suppliers and network operators are responding to this increasing complexity with comprehensive digitalization, for example through the use of smart meters, smart grids and AI. LEW uses artificial intelligence to create inflow forecasts for its hydroelectric power plants and to support customer service. The LEW tool "Inno.Live" is aimed at municipalities that can use energy-saving LoRa radio technology to transmit sensor data wirelessly in real time. This enables the optimized use of personnel and materials, for example in the maintenance of public green spaces. LEW's commitment to the development of smart cities creates interesting starting points for similar activities of the StMD, for example in the "Kommunal? Digital!" and "TwinBy" projects.
