nir-vana innovation network

The company is located in southern Germany near Stuttgart. It was founded 25 years ago and is until now owner-managed, independent and flexible. At the beginning there were only few engineers, today they count more than 125 high skilled employees. The company has been supplying control systems worldwide to leading builders of large gas engines and power plants, creating solutions for service providers and supporting utility companies in building up the decentralized energy business in virtual power plants. A virtual power plant is a network of decentralized power generating stations. These can be, solar parks, hydrogen and synthetic gas power plants, combined heat and power (CHP) stations,
as well as flexible power consumers and storage systems. Via interfaces all the generating and consuming units are connected.
The objective of a virtual power plant is to relieve the load on the grid by distributing the power generated by the individual
units intelligently during periods of peak load.
The company has a wide experience in international networking and partnerships. The innovation of the company is a freely configurable solution for the superordinate control of energy stations for local and district heating systems in neighborhoods, hospitals, public swimming pools, and in the industrial sector. Production units such as combined heat power stations, heat pumps and boilers, as well as storage systems, pumps and valves, are perfectly matched to each other. The modules at the measurement and control level, control and monitor all conceivable producers, storage systems and consumers, and can be expanded as needed – into all sectors. All existing energy flows are brought together while also taking into account the hydraulic circuits. At the core is the intelligent energy storage system management for decoupling generation and consumption. In this way, all producers can be operated optimally according to heating requirement and operating strategies. All data is available at all times via standard interfaces – the grid control technology, for example, can automatically import the entire configuration of the product. This greatly reduces the effort in visualizing all connected energy stations and is the foundation of all future investment, for example hydrogen from renewables. An interface to virtual power plants is also given.
The company offers within a partnership:
- Economic efficiency analysis for partial renovation or the complete modernization of existing systems
- Development of future energy concepts
- Enables a holistic control of your existing or planned decentralized energy systems, independent of location and time, through secure remote maintenance with access management
- 3rd level support provided by own project engineers
- Support in configuration and selection of the required control solution
- Software updates, trainings etc.

Advantages & innovations

The innovation is part of an extensive modular system, which comprises several functionalities in different phases of energy distribution, management and marketing through virtual power plants. The energy management of combined heat and power plants has come up in the last decade with the increasing significance of renewable energy sources and more efficient solutions. Thus, the management of numerous energy producer units, is a relatively new challenge. Up to now cost-intensive and usually individual programming of energy management systems are realized. The product offered is the first modular system managing up to 12 producer units. These innovations have a direct influence for energy efficiency and cost reductions in capital expenditures (also called CAPEX) as well as in operational expenditures (also called OPEX). The vertically integrated software modules set the stage for all future business models and technologies to come up in future.

Stage of development

Already on the market

Partner sought

Partner sought: Industrial partners such as energy performance contractors (EPC) or system integrators who are offering solutions to distribution system operators (DSO), utilities or energy contracting companies contracts. Main focus should be in smart districts, smart cities, industrial applications or generally complex energy systems where various technologies such as combined heat power (CHP), hydrogen and synthetic gas power plants, heat pumps, solar thermal, PV, wind, e-mobility, or biomass are combined in one plant – decentralized sector coupled energy plants. Heat, Power and e-mobility is managed by one integrated energy management solution. Role of the partner: Currently typically the heating contractors sector offer their specialty, mostly in the installation of heating systems. With this system, the contractors and / or system integrators have additional unique selling points (USP) in order to strengthen their market position in direction of sector coupling and flexibility markets. Type of partnership considered: System integrators and energy performance contractors (EPC). The company is looking for utility companies and power plant manufacturers for commercial agreements with technical support.