Initial situation, problem, and motivation:
Despite increasing electricity consumption, the Waldviertel, as an archetype of a rural region, is fundamentally well positioned to independently cover heat and electricity consumption with sun, wind, and biomass. Fluctuating electricity prices, uncertain availability of fossil energy sources from abroad, but also people's increasing desire for a sustainable and future-proof energy supply together with ambitious political goals mean that the share of renewable energy will continue to increase over the next few years. The Waldviertel is developing into an energy exporter for urban areas. On the other hand, there is increasing electricity consumption due to electrification in buildings (heat pumps, cooling requirements in summer) and the expansion of electromobility - a necessary development for the decarbonization of individual transport, especially in a commuter region like the Waldviertel.
In view of these developments, one of the central challenges of our time is
- to reconcile the increasingly fluctuating production and increasing consumption over time (short, medium, and long term),
- to integrate additional production capacities into an already overloaded transmission and distribution system, as well as
- to find new organizational forms and corresponding roles and tasks that can map and process our future, small-scale and decentralized energy system with many active participants, a wide variety of roles with diverging requirements and needs.
Cross-sector storage and flexibility (on producer and consumer side) are becoming increasingly important.
Goals and innovation:
The planned innovation lab Waldviertel has set itself the goal of developing solutions under the motto “We help people shape the future” to supply the Waldviertel with 100% renewable energy sources in the next few years and to become climate neutral by 2035. This transformation represents an enormous challenge and requires parallel actions on multiple levels.
To enable the necessary cross-sector, sustainable and flexible energy supply, and distribution in the region - as well as throughout Austria - and to solve the corresponding challenges, a combination of activities is needed. The aim of the present project is therefore primarily to
(1) To develop strategies and regionally typical solutions for a climate neutral Waldviertel in 2035 in close cooperation with the lead project and other planned research projects
(2) to create a comprehensive, configurable, and flexible infrastructure for testing these approaches as well as innovative technologies and system solutions that can be used by different actors,
(3) the mobilization and active involvement of private individuals, companies, communities, and other regional initiatives to shape and participate together
(4) to further advance developed and positively validated/implemented approaches to transferable solutions and roll them out widely.
The planned innovation lab creates the material and immaterial framework conditions to develop model solutions for a 100% renewable energy supply jointly with users and to test them in real life.
The planned innovation lab, together with the lead project, addresses the region's key challenges, such as: the flexibilization of power supply, the cascading utilization of existing raw materials (e.g. biomass) for energy supply, and the continued presence of individual mobility. The planned RTI infrastructure of the innovation lab enables the realistic validation of a variety of solutions to the energy system transformation challenges through a flexible structure.
The chosen, integrative approach ensures a high level of acceptance and multiplicativity of the system solutions developed, as the Waldviertel model region is representative of rural areas throughout Austria in many respects. Together, we can solve the increasingly interdisciplinary challenges of the energy transition. The lab offers a regionally created infrastructure, with first-rate know-how, excellent regional networking, outstanding methodological expertise, extensive experience in research and development, economic expertise, as well as extensive national and international networking.
Declarations of support (LoCs) from more or less all relevant actors in the Waldviertel energy landscape show the high relevance of the topic and the broad support for the project in the region.
