KIT research from 'Materials to Systems' for energy storage systems

Since 1st of January 2011, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology bundles all work in the field of electric energy storage for mobile and stationary applications in the project “Competence E”.
In Competence E, 26 institutes are working in the fields of chemistry, materials research, production and process engineering, electrical engineering, product development, vehicle systems, informatics and technological impact assessment.
Within this publication, we will give a short overview about the projects "New Materials and Processes for Lithium Ion Cells", "Large Scale Renewable Energy Stations" and "Safety of Home Storage Systems" and we will speak more detailed about our project for public transport "Electric City Bus".
City busses play a major role in public transport in cities. As many cities all over the world are looking for emission free and low noise methods for public transport, electric and hybrid electric city busses have been found to be as a possible solution. This trend was identified by the research group "Competence E" at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and a research and development project that aims to improve the performance of electric city busses had been initiated. ... mehrAt the Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung (IAA) 2013 we presented the developed E-City Bus demonstrator. Within this presentation we focus on: the motivation for usage of electric driven busses in cities, a short market analysis, and major steps within the development process of the E-City Bus demonstrator including: Analysis of real operation of busses, Simulation of vehicle behavior major technical aspects of the developed E-City Bus including: a system overview, the modular and flexible battery concept, a focus on the Battery Management System and a focus on the vehicle controller of the bus.