smartbuildingmag.com
21
’22
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FEV News
As a leading global service provider in vehicle and powertrain development, FEV has strong, historically grown expertise in the use of alternative energies and powertrains in the mobility sector. This expertise will now also benefit the energy sector and industry in their defossilization. To this end, the company has established a new business unit, FEV Energy. From generation to transport and storage to the use of green energy, FEV will offer services from a single source for the entire value chain in the future.
With its new FEV Energy business unit, FEV is transferring its expertise in the use of alternative energies and drive trains from the mobility sector to the energy sector and industry in order to drive forward their defossilization.
No successful energy transition without sector coupling: In order to reduce global CO2 emissions at the required rapid pace, solutions are needed that intelligently network and holistically optimize the individual sectors – power and heat generation, mobility, and industry. This is the only way to master the challenges of the transformation to a CO2-neutral society through the use of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power. “Against this background, it is a logical step to transfer our expertise from the mobility sector to the power and heat sector as well,” said Dr. Benedikt Heuser, Group Director Energy, FEV Group. “The new FEV Energy business unit ideally complements the existing business areas of our company.”
Numerous potential fields of activity
The new business activities are as diverse as the possibilities for generating, storing, transporting and using renewable energies themselves: for example, system design of photovoltaic plants, optimal dimensioning and control of photovoltaic battery storage heat generator systems, fuel cell combined heat and power plants or stationary energy storage systems. FEV Energy also provides support in the preparation of energy audits and sustainability reports. In the automotive sector, the development and integration of bidirectional charging management (BCM) is a promising new area. For this purpose, FEV is developing, for example, smart control strategies for energy management in domestic and industrial environments and for intelligent charging and discharging of connected vehicle batteries.
FEV transfers existing know-how
For all the applications mentioned, FEV Energy takes on the role of a system integrator. Component benchmarking as FEV’s core competence is the key to this: although new markets and customers also result in new requirements for the components used, their technical functionality remains largely unchanged. In the first step, FEV Energy is focusing on business models that can be realized quickly with its existing development and testing expertise. These include energy audits, testing and development of fuel cell cogeneration plants and electrolyzers, development of mobile charging and refueling infrastructures, and simulation and project planning of power-to-X applications. These technologies include the conversion and storage of renewable electricity into green gases such as hydrogen or methane (power-to-gas), into liquid energy carriers such as fuels for sustainable mobility and for buildings (power-to-liquids), or for the synthesis of chemical feedstocks for industry (power-to-chemicals). The target group includes industrial customers in the business-to-business environment.
