Open Access

Philipp Jussen, Steffen Nienke, Felix Optehostert, Vasco Seelmann, Frederick Birtel

• To achieve the German climate goal of an 80 % share of renewable energy sources in gross electricity consumption, not only the establishment of sustainable energy generation plants but also the further development of power grids is required. However, with an increasing dependence on a reliable and robust smart grid, negative effects caused by targeted attacks (e.g. hacker activities, terrorist attacks etc.) become a serious risk and must be considered sufficiently. Therefore, future energy networks require the introduction of a secure, highly available communication infrastructure supporting the operation of a power grid as well as the implementation of remote and predictive services in the supply networks. This paper introduces a catalogue of requirements and design recommendations for the connection of onshore wind farms to the internet for energy communication network. They illuminate the subject, both from a technical and an organizational perspective. Additionally, a smart service platform is suggested to serve as a suitable solution for addressing both kinds of requirements properly by standardizing the communication between operators, direct marketers and distribution systems operators on the one hand, but also providing a basis for innovative service offers on the other hand. The results are based on outcomes from the current research project eSafeNet (funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy) and include several interviews from experts in research and industry. Altogether, those gained insights are considered and complete the findings of this paper.