Competition for the German Building Award 2022 announced

Housing industry, architects and municipalities called upon to participate

Berlin - Affordable and high-quality housing construction is currently more important than ever. For more than three decades, outstanding housing projects have been awarded the German Building Award every two years. This year's edition of the competition has now been announced.

The aim of the award, which is sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Housing, Urban Development and Construction, is to recognise the responsible efforts of developers to create affordable housing and neighbourhoods in "High Quality at Affordable Cost".

The German Building Award is known in the professional world and beyond as the most important prize in the field of housing construction in Germany. It is awarded by the German Association of Cities, the Association of German Architects (BDA) and the German Housing Association (GdW) within the framework of the joint KOOPERATION working group (AG KOOP).

The jury will use eight criteria to select 30 projects that will be nominated for the German Building Owner Award. All nominees will receive recognition for the projects they have submitted. A total of five German Building Owner Awards and up to three additional special awards will be presented.

"In order to continuously improve good and quality housing in Germany, innovative and at the same time affordable solutions are indispensable. Especially now, social responsibility and awareness of the quality of living spaces play a decisive role in this. The compatibility of these two criteria has been honoured with the German Building Award for more than 30 years and has only gained in importance," says GdW President Axel Gedaschko.

"How liveable cities are is determined in particular by the qualities of their public spaces and their built environment. The good examples from the German Building Award set standards for this. They offer high quality at affordable costs. It is good if, in the sense of sustainable and future-oriented urban development, such positive examples inspire other builders in as many places as possible," affirms the President of the German Association of Cities, Lord Mayor Markus Lewe from Münster.

"We need good and affordable housing that makes a qualitative contribution to urban and inner development and in which people want to live. Innovative existing developments and the further building of existing neighbourhoods are most likely to achieve high qualities at affordable costs while minimising the consumption of resources," explains Susanne Wartzeck, President of the BDA.

Housing companies and cooperatives, private and public developers, investors, developer groups, municipalities and property developers, freelance architects, urban planners and landscape architects as well as consortiums of planners in coordination with their developers can submit projects.

The submission of the competition documents is exclusively online via the portal www.einreichung-deutscherbauherrenpreis.de possible. The deadline for applications is 14 March 2022 at 2 pm.

Further information on the competition and the award winners is also available at www.deutscherbauherrenpreis.de

Keywords: DE-News, Affordable housing, Contests & Prizes, Housing, Aesthetics / Architecture / Building Culture

Published 18. December 2018

4 years Energy storage, networked operation and energy management for the power grid of the island of Borkum

Project partners of the EU project NETfficient take stock and publish manual in January 2019

Over the past four years, the power grid on the North Sea island of Borkum has served as a real laboratory for testing elements of a future-proof energy system. Central to this was the development of energy storage systems and their networked operation within a virtual power plant. The measures were funded by the EU project NETfficient from January 2015 to December 2018. 13 partners from 7 EU member states worked together.

Forty private houses, five large buildings, part of the Borkum street lighting and the temperature control of the Borkum Seawater Aquarium were connected to PV and energy storage systems, which range from lithium-ion batteries, supercapacitors and recycled old batteries from electric vehicles to hydrogen storage and low-temperature water storage. A 1 MW / 500 kWh large-scale storage system consisting of lithium-ion batteries and supercapacitors was also used in the medium-voltage grid. All these storages and generators were connected to the so-called Energy Management Platform (a Distributed Energy Management System or DERMS), which is the central element of NETfficient. The Energy Management Platform allows the automated operation of the generators and storages and optimizes the energy consumption on the one hand and allows the provision of system services on the other hand.

The various visits to the island of Borkum were enriching for all project partners, who gained insights into life and living there, as well as into the interests and concerns of the island's inhabitants. They found an island community that has an above-average understanding of the challenges of the energy transition and climate change and that has its sights firmly set on the goal of becoming climate-neutral and emission-free by 2030.

On a technical level, this was an extremely complex project that required close coordination between the individual partners, most of whom did not even know each other before the project began. Participation in the project allowed partners from academia and research, industry and SMEs to deepen and exchange their knowledge and skills in a wide range of areas such as energy storage, power electronics, network technology, energy conversion and software. Several partners were able to increase the technological maturity of their products and improve their offer to customers within the framework of the project. For some, the project collaboration led to new orders or projects. Project coordinator Ayesa Advanced Technologies SA (Spain) comments:

"NETfficient was a key project for Ayesa's innovation strategy. It allowed the company to develop new energy solutions with outstanding market potential and established strong collaborations with European partners in the energy and storage value chains. We thank all NETfficient partners for their intensive work on this ambitious project and great community spirit in working towards the project goals."

The most important findings from the project are now being summarized in a handbook, which will be published in January. It can be pre-ordered by emailing netfficient.project@gmail.com.

Further information on the project can also be found at www.netfficient-project.eu. In NETfficient, the Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum took over the administrative and financial project management, the dissemination and exploitation of the project results, the communication and supports the market introduction.

NETfficient is coordinated by Ayesa Advanced Technologies S.A. in cooperation with 12 partners: Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia; Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of the University of Cagliari; Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE; PowerTech Systems; Schneider Electric GmbH; Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum; Swerea IVF (from ; Vandenborre Energy Systems NV; Williams Advanced Engineering; Wirtschaftsbetriebe der Stadt Borkum GmbH; Zigor Research&Development; and follower-partner Ayuntamiento de Santander City Council's Information and Communications Department. The project is co-funded by the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Project No. 646463.

Website:
www.netfficient-project.eu

Keywords:
DE-News, Energy storage, Renewable, News Blog Lower Saxony, Electricity storage