That was the Markt&Technik DC Conference 2025
The second DC Conference - "DC grids take off” - powered by ODCA, which took place on October 23, 2025 in Ludwigsburg, built on the success of the first DC Conference.
It clearly demonstrated that direct current (DC) networks are no longer a vision of the future, but rather a market-ready technology with great economic potential. They offer advantages such as simpler construction, greater safety and energy recovery, particularly in industrial plants, data centres and industrial parks.
Nevertheless, knowledge about them is still limited among users. Many are still unable to properly assess the advantages of switching, are uncertain and therefore stick with conventional AC systems for the time being. However, the conference provided clear prospects for the future: if manufacturers, system providers, planners and users work together, the switch can be made quickly and economically.
Data centres can play a pioneering role in this, because 800 VDC systems make a decisive contribution to significantly reducing the exploding energy requirements of data centres. The same applies to many other applications: DC networks offer a great opportunity to save energy, integrate renewable energies and storage, conserve resources and strengthen competitiveness.
1 Ticket - 1 Location - 2 Events
The DC Conference was co-located with our event Forum Single Pair Ethernet. The ticket gave access to both events.
DC grids take off
The advantages of DC networks in industrial production - the energy costs for power distribution in the factory are reduced by up to 50 percent, the costs for copper cables also by up to 50 percent - are now well known.
However, in addition to industrial production, direct current technology is opening up numerous other very promising fields of application in which it can also make important contributions to the energy transition. These include data centers, lighting, building automation, logistics (from high-bay warehouses to conveyor belts at airports), semiconductor production and, last but not least, DC microgrids for distributed power, for example for networking PV, batteries and charging stations in neighborhoods.
Our Speakers
Impressions 2024
Last year, the “DC Conference: DC grids for industry”, powered by ODCA (Open Direct Current Alliance), took place for the first time with great success. A lot has happened since then. The ODCA is continuing to drive standardization forward and VDE SPEC 90037 V1.0 “System Discription for DC Industry” is now available. This shows that DC for industry is widely accepted.
