Dear Readers,

Applications of informatics in the energy sector are more important than ever. Energy supply chains need to be reorganized, efficiency increased, energy infrastructure must be built and rebuilt, existing systems must be used in the best possible way. This is particularly true for the DACH region, where the energy transition has become a central topic of public interest and societal issues ranging from affordable heat supply to location conditions for energy-intensive industry need to be addressed.

The objective of the DACH+ conference series on Energy Informatics is to promote research, development, and implementation of information and communication technologies in the energy domain and to foster the exchange between academia, industry, and service providers in the German–Austrian–Swiss region and its neighboring countries (DACH+). Over the past decade, it has established itself as the premier European conference in the field.

In this year’s incarnation of the conference, we have seen a considerable amount of works submitted that deal with recent advances in machine learning methods applied to energy domain problems, especially large language models and their underlying technologies such as transformers—the latter ones not to be confused with their electrical counterparts. In total, we received 55 submissions, of which we accepted 17 full and three short papers as well as two demos. Additionally, ten extended abstracts for posters were accepted, including contributions from the co-located Energy Informatics Doctoral Workshop.

The hosts of the conference are the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology together with the OVE Austrian Electrotechnical Association, and the OCG Austrian Computer Society. AIT is Austria’s largest Research and Technology Organization. It has positioned itself as a leading development partner for the industry by bridging academia with applications. The Austrian Computer Society (OCG) is a non-profit association that was founded in 1975 to promote informatics and ICT. The OVE Austrian Electrotechnical Association was founded in 1883 with the advent of electrification and offers networking opportunities to science, research, industry, commerce, and the energy sector.

Funding was kindly provided by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology (BMK). With this support, we are happy to present the proceedings of the 12th DACH+ Conference on Energy Informatics 2023.

Sincerely,

Friederich Kupzog (General Chair)

Ronald Bieber (Tecchnical Program Chair)

Mark Stefan (Tecchnical Program Chair)

Oleg Valgaev (Publication Chair)