Today about 75% of the population in Germany lives in cities. The development of solutions for the energy-efficient energy supply of urban areas is therefore of great importance for the future. With this in mind, a climate-neutral urban district designed as a real-life laboratory is being created in the Palatinate city of Kaiserslautern.

The district’s energy requirements are to be covered as far as possible by electricity generated locally by renewable energy sources, such as PV facades: Therefore, the nine project partners are collaborating to develop energy supply concepts that aim to make optimum use of the available areas suitable for solar energy generation. Battery and heat storage systems are to make the supply and demand of energy even more flexible. Three of the historic buildings will remain in place and will be renovated in an energy-efficient manner. This will include switchable glazing, ventilation systems integrated in the window frames, brightly-coloured photovoltaic facades as well as smart home solutions, which will help to keep the energy consumption in these industrial buildings to a minimum. In addition, a smart grid will connect all energy producers, direct energy converters, storage facilities and consumers, and will control electricity and heating networks intelligently and efficiently.

A further aspect of the concept of this district is the integration of intelligent sustainable mobility solutions. In particular, the bi-directional shop is to be further developed on the 20-hectare site.

The EnStadt-Pfaff collaborative project, launched at the end of 2017, is one of six flagship projects of the federal “Solar Building/Energy Efficient City” funding initiative. The project is jointly funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with a total of around 23 million euros.