Many things will change for our electricity grids in the coming years: As is already the case today in some cases, we will no longer be supplied with electricity by a few large power plants in the future, but instead energy will increasingly be fed into the grid at many locations, for example from private photovoltaic systems. A massive change is imminent, particularly in terms of consumption, for example through an increase in electromobility or through a switch from gas or oil heating systems to electric heat pumps. Regional energy communities, in which distributed energy technologies can be used more efficiently and coordinated with regional consumption, reinforce this development.

Our electricity grids, with the medium and low-voltage grids in particular providing the supply basis for a large number of household, commercial and industrial customers, must be adapted to the new requirements so that they remain fail-safe in the future. This is why the Power System Cognification (PoSyCo) project, which is being jointly managed by Siemens and the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), was launched: Our power grids are to become "smart grids", i.e. automated, predictive and digitized systems that detect problems early on and implement advanced protective functions in a targeted manner, primarily to prevent power outages and overload situations. Using a model region in the lakeside town of Aspern in Vienna, the project will investigate how this can best be achieved.