One of the great challenges today is the reduction of Carbon Dioxide emissions. To reach the ambitious international targets, renewable energies from decentralised wind turbines and PV become more and more important. If the electrical energy can be consumed at the place where it is generated,  the global grid can be release of user load.
If this local consumption of energy is in addition coupled with an intelligent local energy management, such a so-called local cluster is able to react on under- or overload requirements of the global grid. As a result, local intelligent energy management can be provided as a balancing service to the overall grid.
Most important for the above mentioned “intelligence” are microelectronic components as developed in the SmartCoDe project. When highly integrated and produced in mass series they can enable communication and control features as required by a Smart Grid.
The SmartCoDe project has been invited by the European Commission to exhibit first results at CeBIT 2012 in Hannover. Mrs Neelie Kroes, vice president of the European Commission visited the booth in the course of her tour of CeBIT in order to receive first-hand information. Mrs Kroes was shown a live demonstration of the SmartCoDe project which brings intelligent energy management to consumers and co-ordinates power-using appliances with a special focus on security and privacy. The EU commissioner was especially interested in the System in Package (SiP) chip module which demonstrated ostensively the significance of microelectronics as a key enabling technology for solving the problems of the 21^st century.