Digitalization pervades nearly all areas of social and economic life. The digital development offers companies advantages, for example, to better adapt products to customer needs or to constantly optimize business models. In particular, the supply of energy from volatile, renewable sources will be able to exploit its potential even more in the future with the help of digitalization and thus contribute to opimised flexible energy supply solutions.
This issue of “nachhaltige technologien” gives a comprehensive overview of different new approaches with regard to flexibilization of industrial energy systems. Articles about the development of digital energy twins, that enable real-time mapping of renewable energy supply systems for industrial processe, the creation of a digital waste heat atlas, that provides the geo-referenced potential of waste heat utilization for district heating and the development of a platform to use cloud manufacturing for digital supply chain networks as well as shared use of globally distributed manufacturing facilities are a few highlights.