Companies and universities are working together in big joint projects to pave the way for the everyday use of electric vehicles. One such project is Harz.EE-Mobility. For this project, Siemens CT has teamed up with 14 partners – including research institutes, the Deutsche Bahn railroad company, and wireless provider Vodafone – to make Germany’s Harz district a model region for electric mobility. The project, which focuses on electric vehicle charging and communications between the automobile and the power grid, requires out-of-the-box thinking for power generation and transmission. Wind, solar, and other alternative energy sources already contribute more than half of the power generated in the Harz district. As a result, the grid is often glutted with too much wind power – for example, during windy periods. To prevent the grid from becoming overloaded, wind turbines have to be switched off. This problem could be solved using electric vehicles as mobile energy storage units. Electric cars would recharge their batteries whenever winds are strong, especially at night. Conversely, during calm periods they could feed electricity back into the grid at higher prices. However, to make this possible, power generation, power distribution, and vehicles have to be intelligently coordinated with one another. The aim of the Harz.EE-Mobility project is to find out how that works in practice. To this end, scientists at CT are working with the Energy Sector to develop energy management systems that can automatically control the approximately 2,000 energy generation units (wind turbines, biogas facilities, solar power systems, and electric vehicles) in the Harz region. The data for the energy management systems is exchanged through a channel in the charging stations’ standardized power plugs. Thus the charging stations can recognize that a vehicle is ready for charging and invoice customers automatically. The station also informs the vehicle of the charging output it can provide without overloading the grid. This is important in parking garages, for example, where many vehicles might recharge at the same time.