Energy Solution Center Karlsruhe Founded

The new HPC Energy Solution Center Karlsruhe is aimed at developing programs and tools for the efficient use of high-performance computers in energy research and energy technology. The state of Baden-Württemberg supports the institution founded as a non-profit association by KIT and six industry partners.

Digital modeling and computer simulation are gaining importance in science. Research is increasingly dependent on high-performance computing (HPC) to solve the big problems of the presence. This also applies to energy research and energy technology. However, user programs to solve energy-relevant tasks on HPC systems are still lacking in this area.

The Energy Solution Center (EnSoC) in Karlsruhe was founded as a non-profit association and focuses on practical problems di¬rectly relating to industry. It develops novel simulation methods and implements them in the corresponding software programs in an ap¬plication-specific manner. It pools the competencies of science and industry. Founding members of the EnSoC are KIT, EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG with two representatives, Siemens AG, SAP AG, T-Systems SfR GmbH, and Hewlett-Packard Deutschland GmbH. The chairman of the board of this association is KIT Vice President Dr. Peter Fritz. Other board members are Adolf Treml, EnBW AG, Dr. Klaus Willnow, Siemens AG, and Professor Wilfried Juling, KIT.

Minster of Science, Professor Dr. Peter Frankenberg, underlines: “Sustainable generation of energy is one of the most decisive tasks of the future. KIT and its partners have joined to find innovative solutions. This cooperation between a university and industrial companies in the field of simulation technology for the energy sector is unique in Germany.”

Among others, EnSoC shall develop appropriate IT-based methods and solutions for the following areas of energy research and technology: Use of renewable energies, such as water power, wind, geothermal power, and biomass; reforming of hydrocarbons from natural gas and biomass to hydrogen, synthesis gas, and synthetic fuels; classical power plant technology, in particular gas and steam turbine technology as well as power plant instrumentation and control systems; nuclear technology and fusion technology; simulation of the electric power grid; energy conversion and energy storage; model-based diagnosis of combustion systems; electromobility; stochastic optimization and simulation of energy markets; materials for energy technology; modeling of electrical properties of materials.

KIT has bundled research activities relating to these and other topics in the KIT Energy Center. The KIT Steinbuch Centre for Computing (SCC), the co-initiator of EnSoC, supplies computing resources and HPC competence. It is the task of EnSoC to conceive and implement research projects at own facilities or in cooperation with other institutions, to bring together research and practice, to disseminate scientific results by publications and events, and to promote scientific education and advanced training.

EnSoC, founded in December 2009, is one of four planned HPC Solution Centers in Baden-Württemberg. In 2008, the center for the automotive sector was founded in Stuttgart. A center for chemistry and pharmacy and a center for life science and medicine are planned in Ulm and Heidelberg, respectively. Initiator of the HPC Solution Centers is the state government of Baden-Württemberg. The centers shall be active in a nation-wide manner and bundle competencies in the selected areas in order to cope with the challenges with the help of high-performance computing.