Welcome @ Helmholtz Program ESD -
Designing the Energy System of the Future.

Our future energy supply should be carbon neutral, affordable, and socially sustainable. With our “Energy System Design” program, we aim to lead the way and make a significant contribution to the transition to a sustainable global energy system.

NEWS

Icons for milestone report with ESD logo, computer, book, flashlight
February 2026: Milestone Report Launching New Open-X Solutions for Energy System Research

Research on future energy systems is complex — it requires multidisciplinary expertise, high‑quality data, models, algorithms, and robust software. Within ESD Topic 2, we developed and released a set of new open‑source, open-model and open-data solutions designed to make this work faster, easier, and more integrated. A milestone report highlights how the emerging Open‑X suite already supports innovative research approaches — and aims to inspire even broader adoption.

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Giovanni De Carne in a blazer standing in a  lab environment.
January 2026: Prof. De Carne appointed new co-editor-in-chief for IEEE OJPEL

The IEEE Open Journal of Power Electronics (OJPEL) is a 100% open-access journal that publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed articles on the development and application of power electronic systems and technologies.
Prof. De Carne has now been appointed as the new co-editor-in-chief alongside Prof. Wenkang Huang from Infineon Technologies (USA). We congratulate them and wish them every success in further improving the quality of this important publication.

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Aerial view of modern buildings with many solar panels on rooftops, surrounding roads and trees.Amadeus Bramsiepe, KIT
January 2026: KIT Boosts Solar Power for Research

New 660 kWp rooftop PV system at Campus North powers energy research and computing infrastructure with clean electricity. The additional solar capacity directly supports key research platforms such as Energy Lab, enabling real‑world testing of future energy technologies.

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OpenEMS Hackathon event visuals: KIT campus nods, modular labs, OpenEMS rabbit logo.
OpenEMS Hackathon Q1/2026

We invite you to the OpenEMS Hackathon Q1/2026 at KIT Karlsruhe on March 17–18, 2026. Join us to explore topics such as OpenEMS for beginners, forecasting integration, MILP-based optimization, and the Energy Scheduler. Participants can also bring their own ideas (Topic X) to discuss and develop collaboratively. We look forward to two days of hands‑on development, exchange, and innovation.

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Team of professionals in a modern glass-office meeting, overlaid with city skyscrapers.alphaspirit - stock.adobe.com
December 2025: Practice-oriented Teaching - New Lecture on Smart Resilience Technologies

Digital decision-making technologies play a crucial role in ensuring the resilience of critical infrastructures, as overall complexity increases with rising climatic, digital and geopolitical risks and growing interconnectedness. To prepare future professionals for these challenges, KIT and the technology company SAP have jointly developed the lecture “Smart Resilience Technologies”. The focus is on adaptation strategies for complex transformation processes.

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4th Int'l Workshop on Open Source Modelling & Simulation of Energy Systems, March 23-25, Karlsruhe, Germany
OSMSES 2026 in Karlsruhe: Call for Papers open

The 4th International Workshop on ”Open Source Modelling and Simulation of Energy Systems” will take place in
March 23-25, 2026 in Karlsruhe. The Call for Papers is now open. 

OSMSES 2026 conference website