badenova AG & Co. KG, with its headquarter in Freiburg, Germany, is a full service utility providing with 1.400 employees electricity, gas, water to its customers.
badenova is an ecologically oriented, municipal energy service provider and distribution grid operator in the South Baden region with almost 1 million inhabitants. Its shareholders are 96 municipalities and Thüga AG, Munich. The company operates around 190,000 electricity meters and 170,000 natural gas meters, has around 1,400 employees including all fully consolidated subsidiaries and annual sales of more than € 900 million. Badenova supports its municipal shareholders in the “Energiewende” (transition towards a sustainable energy system) with innovative, sustainable solutions. In addition to smart home components, badenova offers end-customers battery storage, heating and PV systems as well as wall boxes for electro mobility.
badenova holds stakes in other municipal utilities and grid operators (e.g. in the cities of Freudenstadt, Kirchzarten, Gundelfingen, Tuttlingen) and can provide through its subsidiary ITG additional funds for battery projects in the industrial areas in Freiburg, Offenburg and Lahr.
In addition badenova is part of the “Thüga Group”. This group is the largest public-sector association in Germany and generated around 19 billion euros in sales in 2016 with around 17,200 employees. Thüga is shareholder of badenova and badenova vice versa via the company “KOM9” on Thüga. In cooperation with its affiliated companies, Thüga uses platforms known as “plus companies”. These arise when services can be provided more efficiently by bundling tasks. In this way, the partners can avoid a multiple build-up of the corresponding resource and obtain the corresponding services from the central plus-company in high quality and availability. However, due to economies of scale or specific knowledge effects, plus companies can also perform activities that are cheaper and / or qualitatively better than those of the respective companies alone. Via the Thüga Group solutions developed in the project INVADE can be spread to municipal utilities throughout Germany.
badenova is strongly oriented towards renewable energies. Its “Innovation Fund for Climate and Water Protection” supports many local energy pioneers: 237 projects with a total of €25 million have been sponsored since the founding was started, including many municipal projects. This innovation fund is endowed with about 1.5 million € per year by badenova.
Tasks in the project
Within the INVADE Project, badenova is responsible for establishing and operating a hybrid demo-site in Germany, consisting of one large scale battery storage as well as at least ten connected distributed storages in private households. This includes all technical issues as well as establishing the communication link to the INVADE platform and developing appropriate business models.
Responsible
Task 10.6. Pilot Implementation in Germany
Core competences
badenova holds key competences as an active, independent utility company in Germany. In the field of renewable energies, badenova combines know-how along the entire value chain in the areas of wind and solar energy, photovoltaic, geothermal and biomass and energy efficient building. Further badenova operate widespread distribution grids and has strong skills with own personal in energy trading, balance group handling, accounting, sales and marketing.