Anna Eisner studied economics at the Karl-Franzens-University in Graz, Austria. She holds a master’s degree in political and empirical economics and a PhD in Social and Economic Sciences. During her PhD, she analysed the impact of carbon pricing on household energy expenditure and the financial potential of energy communities to reduce energy costs. Since 2023, she has been a senior researcher at Virtual Vehicle research GmbH in Graz in the Innovative Energy Management & Comfort Systems research group: her research focuses on feasibility studies on V2X applications as well as user behaviour and necessary incentives to promote the introduction of electromobility.
What was your original motivation to become a researcher/project manager?
The idea of becoming a researcher came to me during my studies, when I realised that I never wanted to stop learning new things and that I felt the need to get in touch and exchange ideas with different researchers from different disciplines and countries.
What is your (main) research area today?
My research focuses on user-centred energy systems in combination with the necessary incentives/financial benefits to support the adoption of these new technologies. Research on user-oriented systems involves socio-technical research to understand the human factors in energy, including technology acceptance, social impacts and user behaviour.
What is the main focus of your team in XL-Connect?
Our team leads the consortium and is responsible for project management. In addition, we are involved in the work package on virtual demonstrations, where we simulated a vehicle-to-building (V2B) use case for an industrial site. We have also conducted an EU-wide survey on user behaviour and incentives for smart charging and V2X applications to gain a better understanding of actual user behaviour, which is a key part of the energy system simulation in the XL-Connect project.
From all your activities within the project, what are you the most proud of/keen to share with the public?
The user behaviour and incentives survey conducted as part of the XL-Connect project provided important insights into users’ thoughts and needs. As it is important to put people at the centre of the design and implementation of energy systems in order to take into account their needs, behaviour and acceptance of clean energy technologies and thus achieve a more inclusive and effective energy transition.
How do you expect the XL-Connect results will impact your organisation?
In XL-Connect we strongly increased our knowledge in the fields of bidirectional charging and related user behaviour, energy management as well as digital twins. Further, through our central role as coordinator we strongly increased our visibility and extended our European network as a basis for future research and engineering services.
