Posts Tagged ‘Smart Grid’

Andreas Berthold-van der Molen is responsible for Utilities at Microsoft EMEA which operates in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Microsoft helps their customers in the utilities to optimize their environments.

Andreas was invited as a speaker to the Smart Metering Conference in Copenhagen and Microsoft’s approach was to highlight how we can change consumer behavior by helping them to adapt to new technology. The feedback from the project with Yello Strom was that it’s nice for consumers to have a dashboard that shows the consumption in real-time but after a week or two the interest decreases.

The research made by Microsoft shows that if we can help consumers to increase their living comfort, e.g. by controlling their heating or cooling, we can change the consumer behavior as well.

Together with partners Microsoft offers end-to-end solutions based on technological possibilities that will increase the living comfort and also gives the consumers the ability to control the consumption from a distance.

In the smart grid, Microsoft’s focus is to connect and build bridges between existing applications so that they can talk to each other. If the utilities integrate existing assets, they will be able to solve a lot of ongoing challenges.

Microsoft also supports partners to create solutions for the whole utility value chain from generation, transmission and distribution to the retailers.

Andreas explains that by attending to conferences like the Smart Metering 2010 Scandinavia he has the possibility to talk to a lot of vendors and utilities from different countries during the breaks between the sessions. It is very time efficient to have dialogs in a very short timeframe.

For more information about Microsoft EMEA Utility activities, please visit
www.microsoft.com/utilities

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krPrS12Bmyc

Enerway.se will be present at the Smart Metering Conference on the 10th and 11th of March in Copenhagen. The mission is to get video interviews with visitors, companies and speakers and to publish the interviews on this website and at Youtube.

If you are interested in the video interviews and would like to be scheduled for an interview, please contact us as soon as possible.
We want you to tell us about your company, your products and how they could make the grid smarter.
Link to contact form

Haven’t been registered to the event just yet?
Here’s some links for more information about the event:

Link to the Conference brochure.
Link to copenhagen2010.smartmetering.eu!

Under the Recovery Act we are making the largest ever investment in a smarter, stronger and more secure electric grid. – President Barack Obama

On October 27 2009, Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE) was selected to receive a $200 million grant (of the total $3.4 billion) for Smart Grid innovation under the Recovery Act.

In this video provided by U.S. Department of Energy, Ken DeFontes, CEO at Baltimore Gas & Electric explains how a Smart Meter will help people to become more aware of their everyday electric consumption. He compares the Smart Meters with a grocery store where you as a customer know exactly how much that bag of apples is going to cost you. Instead of a monthly or annual manual read value you can get real time feedback from your meter or online at an Internet web service. With the new Smart technology we are able to monitor when electricity is used. This enables customers to use electricity when prices are lower. The consumption understanding will also help customers to save energy. With old meters we can only calculate how much electricity is being used from one manual reading to another.

Selected parts from President Barack Obama’s Smart Grid announcement at the Generation Solar Energy Center is also in this clip.

Take a look at these links for more information:
Pressrelease from U.S. Department of Energy
Smart Grid Regional Demonstration, list of all selected projects
Baltimore Gas and Electric

Andrew Tang is senior director of a group called ‘the smart energy web’ at the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E). The group looks at what advances in technology that utilities have to implement to be able to save the environment and operate more efficiently and bring the industry into the 21st century.

PG&E has made parts of the presentation at the California Academy of Sciences available.

On the 27th of October, Greg Bove, the construction manager of DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center Arcadia, gave the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama a tour amongst the installation of thousands of solar panels. The Solar Plant is the largest of its kind in the United States and will save approximately 575,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

After the introduction from representatives of the FPL Group, Barack Obama delivered a speech on clean energy, why the 21st century smart grid infrastructure should be built and that it will create tens of thousands of new jobs. Under the Recovery Act that totals $3.4 billion, United States are investing in a smarter, more secure- and energy efficient electric grid.

Sources: www.whitehouse.gov

Here’s a great video created by the South Korean firm, Korea Electric Power Corporation and the Ministry of Knowledge Economy.
The makers of this film have done a fantastic job visualising a Smart Grid and what it can do. You have to watch it. It’s presented in English.

http://www.tessco.com

This post consists of some facts and some dreams…

In the future that I believe in, almost everything will be connected and integrated with each other. You will be able to control and plan your everyday life in a new way. I believe in smart transportation plug-in hybrid vehicles that is part of the community transport system. I think that the smart vehicle will adjust its time schedule after my moves and pick me up when I need it and drive me wherever I would like to go. The people waiting for me know exactly when I will arrive. The plug-in vehicle batteries can be charged anywhere in the grid.

Does it sound too futuristic?
Visit www.skycab.se/eng or take a look at this video:

In the future that I believe in, you don’t need several cards in your wallet for bank accounts, shopping bonus cards, ID etc. You are the ID yourself by using your eyes or your fingerprints and perhaps with only one card.

Read about Precise Biometrics Match-on-Card™

Ok, what does this have to do with a Smart Grid Infrastructure?
It’s easy. Without electricity the civilization stops and this is just the beginning.
The utility companies are in the perfect position for creating new flexible and reliable services and products. In the Smart Grid everything will be more flexible and it will be easy to monitor what’s happening in the grid and automatically adjust to it. You will be able to minimize distribution losses, detect leaks, peaks and outages and much more.

There could be much more than just energy and water.

To be able to communicate in the Smart Grid you need to set up an infrastructure for telecommunication. Telecommunication will be a key in the future to come so why not build a network that all customers also can use to get access to the Internet at the same time and make some money on it? Some utility companies have decided that they don’t want to become a telecom company and stops. Other utility companies build a backbone network instead and invite telecom operating companies to use it for its traffic. This enables a deregulated market which is good for the end customers.

Here’s a link to one utility company in Sweden that provides an open city network.
www.jonkopingenergi.se/web/Bredband (Swedish)
www.jonkopingenergi.se/web/Bredband (Google translate)

With a Smart Grid Infrastructure you will be able to adapt to new services and products.

What is a smart grid and why should it be built?

Electricity is produced at the same time as it is consumed. There are no ways energy can be stored in large volumes yet. This means that if for example there is a blackout somewhere in the network the power plants will produce too much electricity. With too much electricity produced the demand will decrease which will affect the electricity prices in the grid. Of course the opposite behaviour will be used if the demand is increasing because of a cold winter’s day or clouds blocking the sun for the solar cells for example.
A Smart Grid could react much faster than the traditional grid and lower the production faster or route the power in another way automatically which makes it possible to minimize the blackout area faster. A Smart Grid could be constructed and programmed to become kind of self healing. The Smart Grid could save money and also the environment.

The metering devices in a Smart Grid should send information in real time to be able to react as soon as possible. The communication latency is a problem for building the Smart Grid. Some AMR systems communicate its data with a relay time of about 24 hours. They are most common for meters installed on the countryside where there are large distances between each delivery site. There are other metering systems that could send information in real time.

The Swedish parliament have decided that all network companies in Sweden should read all electricity meters at least once a month for delivery sites with a fuse size lower than or equal to 63A (Ampere). Delivery sites above the fuse size of 63A should be read once an hour. How and when the data is sent depends on what system that is being used but most meter readings are sent once a day (for hour values) and once a month (for monthly readings). For those network companies that installed a metering system designed for the minimal requirements it could be costly to upgrade the grid to a smart one. This might be something that should be in mind for those utility companies planning for a new AMI project.

Read more about Smart Grids at Wikipedia.org

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