Archive for September, 2009

China is planning to build a Solar power plant generating 2000MW in 2019. The power plant will cover an area of 25 square miles when completed. The complex will be built in Ordos City, Inner Mongolia. The manufacturer of the solar modules will be First Solar Inc.

Sources:
www.bloomberg.com
www.nyteknik.se (swedish)
www.firstsolar.com

Laurence Carpanini, associate Partner at IBM Global Business Services answers some questions about smart metering.

• What are Smart Meters and why are they so important to Great Britain?
• How will this change the way utilities work?
• What are the challenges in delivering the Smart Metering Programme?
• Of course, this will present a number of opportunities.
  What are the most significant of these?
• Why is IBM so well placed to support this revolution in the utilities industry?

For more information go to:
www.ibm.com/easyaccess/ukcomms/smarterutilities

Here’s a well produced presentation from Telenor Cinclus and their smart metering solution.

They have installed over 1 million meters and provide IP based smart metering solutions. Other utility meters can be monitored and controlled over wireless M-Bus. Their meters can communicate with an energy panel which enables a toolbox for future services. With a mobile energy channel it’s possible to get collected information like consumption, price information and alerts sent to mobile devices like cell phones.

Information can be sent in real-time to a computer equipped with software for further analysing in an understandable way.

The metering system communicates wireless and is designed for a smart grid system.

Watch the embedded video from YouTube

Visit www.telenorcinclus.com for more information

EnviroMission is constructing the world’s first large-scale Solar power station. Its 200MW Solar Tower powerstation will provide around 500,000 households with electricity power.

The sun’s radiation is used to heat a large body of air under an expansive collector zone. When the air gets hot it raises and it creates a wind flow that generates electricity at the staged turbines.

EnviroMission started the development in 2001 by searching for the best site for the Solar Tower power station. They finally selected Burunga in New South Wales in Australia.

You can find more information at: www.enviromission.com.au

Take a look at this movie to learn more.

EMIX (Energimarknadens Informationsväxel i Sverige AB) is an electronic data and messaging service designed for a deregulated market. It is developed to improve the information flow between players on the energy market and it is an outcome from an industry initiative. EMIX is 100% owned subsidiary of the Svensk Energi-Swedenergy AB. It is financed by loans from the industry stakeholders in Sweden.

EMIX has about 135 contacted companies today and 70 of them are put into operation.

The reason for developing this service are many but there have been trouble in past where information wasn’t synchronised between two players, for example metering point ID. There could be lack of information that was crucial for creating a correct bill. One customer could have two suppliers at the same time because the END message (Z05) didn’t reach the player and so on. With EMIX most of these problems will be vanished in the future.

What EMIX does, is to keep track of all Ediel messages that is sent from one player to another. If one player doesn’t follow the rules or industry standards a message will be sent to inform about this. In version 2.0 some messages that doesn’t follow industry standard will be sent back directly from EMIX. In the present version EMIX tells the player what is wrong.

All contracted EMIX players have access to a EMIX portal secured by a VPN tunnel. The portal enables the player to get access to all messages where they are involved. In a later version there will probably also be possible to resend a message from the receiver side. Today it’s only possible to resend from the sender side.
There are several reports that can be written from EMIX that shows how your company is doing.

EMIX is between all contracted players so that when a message is sent EMIX grabs it and saves it to its database. It also sends back a control message to inform the sending part that it has been delivered to EMIX. The original message is sent to its receiver that answers with a control message and after that an APERAK message that is transported all the way to the original sending part. Everything is logged with timestamps.
You can read more about the different scenarios that can occur between players on www.emix.se.

EMIX will enable a gradual transition to an open end-user market in the Nordic region and perhaps even in EU.

www.emix.se.

Date: 6-8 October 2009, Barcelona Spain

It’s time for the 11th annual Metering, Billing/CRM Europe conference and exhibition this time with more than 150 leader industry speakers presenting case studies. Approximately 125 of the world’s leading suppliers will present their latest products and services.

There will be a pre-conference seminar about Smart Metering and here is a list of some of the topics listed on their website:

· The Energy Situation
· Ecosystem / Core Concept
· Billing vs. Operational Metering
· Meter History
· Major Solution Components
· Future Grid Principals / Characteristics
· Capability Analysis
· What Does it Means (Meter, Systems)
· Conceptual Architecture
· Sample Solution Architecture
· Impacted Processes
· Capital Investment
· Business Case Framework
· Business Case Methodology
· Cost (Reference and Investment Case)
· Benefit Analysis
· Maturity Framework
· Transformation Success
· How to Start a Programme

Follow this link for more information and to register.
www.metering-europe.com

Today, I almost accidentally found information about one of Google’s projects. They are planning to use the information from “smart meters” to help you keep track of your energy use at home. I haven’t yet found out what Google mean by smart meters but I guess that they need the metering device or something connected to it to send information to a Google based server by the Internet. The user should be able to login to its Google account and analyze their energy use. In Sweden all meters should be able to send accurate meter standing the 1st every month but a lot of the installed meters reads, saves and sends meter values to a management system and stores all data at a server. The meter readings can also be forwarded through communication lines like PLC (PowerLine Carrier), GPRS, Internet et cetera. I think that it qualifies for Google’s Powermeter.

I have been thinking about this and I think that it’s a pretty good idea to use a Google account to publish this information instead of having all grid owners and electricity suppliers to rebuild there own website with this information. I guess some of you will disagree. Perhaps Google can open their API so that some information from Google will be embedded on “your” website? Future will tell.
An interactive website costs a lot of money so therefore I believe that it would be nice to spend that money on other things. The problem might be that Google gets even more information about you. How will the information be used?

From the information that I have found so far it seems like the electricity use is displayed in a rate the meter can read and save. In the demo it’s hour values. You can’t see exactly what device connected that is used at the time. You can only try to analyze this information from the diagram displayed as far as I know from search in the web. I would like to see smart meters that know where the consumption comes from. In a nearby future I think that all new devices like TV, computers, radiators and perhaps even your energy saving lamp will be able to send consumption information by a wireless connection.

I will try to find more information about this and come back!

Here comes some links and videos! Thank you for you time!

www.google.org/powermeter

Automated Meter Reading to Härnösand
Investigation of factors of great significance for the choice of automated meter reading system.

Fjärrstyrda mätsystem till Härnösand
Undersökning av faktorer med avgörande betydelse för val av fjärrstyrda mätsystem.

 Author: Christian Sääf
At Mid Sweden University

Automated Meter Reading to Härnösand

It’s written in Swedish and not really up to date.