The goal of the project DEUM is to satisfy the needs for the distributed energy supply growing together with the number of electric micro vehicles (privately owned or shared e-bikes, electric scooters, skateboards, pedelecs, etc.) in the urban areas.
The first goal of the project is to investigate the optimal organization and topology of the underlying electric network and chargers, in order to minimize the time necessary for travelling of the vehicle to the charger and the charging itself. The formation of unnecessary queues at the chargers should be avoided.
Furthermore, through application of the graph theory and Markov modelling we optimize the electric network considering installation and maintenance costs while keeping the network highly reliable, i.e., without failures leading to unnecessary interruptions of the energy supply services.
The second research area of DEUM are the renewable energy sources and their inclusion in the micromobility energy supply networks. Using high performance computer-based quantum simulations based on the (time-dependent) density functional theory and many body approaches (e.g., GW) we investigate new promising materials allowing to increase the efficiency of the renewable energy generators. There are two large groups of materials we are interested in:
- photovoltaics, i.e., the materials allowing to generate the electric energy directly from the sunlight. More about a related project SolarAlgen can be found here.
- thermoelectric materials allow to generate the electricity from difference of temperature (heat flow) without loud and prone to wear moving parts. The thermoelectric generators are compact and can be used to harvest electric energy wherever there is a wasted heat, including dishwashers, computer server rooms and even human body. (For example, wearable thermoelectric uses the heat a person generates during jogging in order to charge the personal electronics.) The class of systems we are particularly interested in are silicides.
Finally, we use the expertise of the group to investigate innovative battery materials.
DEUM research assistants: Hannah Kirstein, B.Sc., Jan Ole Rönna
