Fraunhofer ISE launches app to maximize consumption of renewables

Germany’s Fraunhofer ISE has released PowerSignal, a new smartphone app that shows the share of renewables in net public electricity generation in real time. It provides data from 12 European countries.

“More detailed data is, of course, available. For example, the contribution of the individual renewable sources to the load currently and as a forecast can be shown,” the institute said in a press release. “In addition, the day-ahead price on the electricity exchange for any of the 34 European countries listed can also be used as the basis for the electricity traffic light.”

Fraunhofer ISE said the app is only available for Android. It said that an Apple iOS version is now under development. The app is available in German, English, French, Spanish, and Italian.

It uses a traffic light system to indicate the relationship between the current renewable share and the average for the respective month over the past five years. If the current share is 10% below this average, the traffic light is red; if it is 10% above, it is green. For the values in between, the light is yellow.

“New electricity data is available every fifteen minutes,” the institute said. “The data are usually updated hourly to show the current forecast. Next-day forecasts are generally available on the previous evening.”

The institute made current energy data available to all interested parties via an open interface. Consumers can use the traffic light system with smart home devices, enabling some products to only work when the renewable share reaches green levels.

“Other energy flow processes in the energy system, such as electric vehicle charging at a charging station or power-consuming events like big-data processing, can also be controlled in this way,” said Fraunhofer ISE.