With an installed PV capacity of >100 GWp, the necessity of controllable storage has vastly increased. While grid connection for largescale battery storage remains a bottleneck, the number of small-scale household battery storage is more than 15 million in 2025 and a vastly increasing market being complemented by the availability of first bi-directional EV charging applications. Within the BMWK-funded research project “SecProMo” the project partners SmartOptimo, Stadtwerke Bielefeld, Arvato Systems, PPC, Items and Hochschule Osnabrück set up a SmartMeter Gateway-based secure communication for the control of decentralized devices combining state-of-the-art lab and field-tests combined with simulations.

Therefore, a grid string in Bielefeld is equipped with intelligent metering systems (iMS) parametrized to monitor all grid state data and correlate them to the assets in this grid string. For simulation purposes these field-data are duplicated and modified to extend the number of data points using Monte Carlo simulations. By the time series and energy data management software DataHub which has been set up for this project these data are combined with weather and EPEX electricity price data and aggregated. Based on the aggregation, control demands can be generated.

As local edge computing devices (home) energy management systems (HEMS) are set next to the grid installation point and coupled to the iMS to monitor and control the energy fluxes within the building. Commercial HEMS systems as well as open-source-based adaptions on basis of “HomeAssistant” are used for that. They can be controlled by the grid operator via EEBUS LPC use case and the fulfill the grid-supporting §14a EnWG use case using iMS and PPC CLS gateway. The HEMS controls several devices, especially a bi-directional AC-coupled battery storage which can be used as flexibility.

To optimize local flexibility the HEMS are usually aggregated in a virtual power plant (VPP). We compare this option to another setup, where the edge HEMS runs a local optimization based on EPEX intraday price, weather forecast data and time-dependent nodal grid tax every 15 minutes. Based on the optimization a bid of flexibility can be placed at EPEX intraday by the grid agent and the bidirectional battery storage is charged or discharged. Our simulations show that the local optimization and price bidding approach works equally well as the aggregated VPP approach while being able to integrate local price signals into the optimization. A first OpenSource-based prototype is presented and successfully tested using bi-directional battery storage fully integrated into iMS infrastructure and energy sector’s market communication.