Scenarios for the development of smart grids in the UK: literature review

Smart grids are expected to play a central role in any transition to a low-carbon energy future, and much research is currently underway on practically every area of smart grids. However, it is evident that even basic aspects such as theoretical and operational definitions, are yet to be agreed upon and be clearly defined. Some aspects (efficient management of supply, including intermittent supply, two-way communication between the producer and user of electricity, use of IT technology to respond to and manage demand, and ensuring safe and secure electricity distribution) are more commonly accepted than others (such as smart meters) in defining what comprises a smart grid. It is clear that smart grid developments enjoy political and financial support both at UK and EU levels, and from the majority of related industries. The reasons for this vary and include the hope that smart grids will facilitate the achievement of carbon reduction targets, create new employment opportunities, and reduce costs relevant to energy generation (fewer power stations) and distribution (fewer losses and better stability). However, smart grid development depends on additional factors, beyond the energy industry. These relate to issues of public acceptability of relevant technologies and associated risks (e.g. data safety, privacy, cyber security), pricing, competition, and regulation; implying the involvement of a wide range of players such as the industry, regulators and consumers. The above constitute a complex set of variables and actors, and interactions between them. In order to best explore ways of possible deployment of smart grids, the use of scenarios is most adequate, as they can incorporate several parameters and variables into a coherent storyline. Scenarios have been previously used in the context of smart grids, but have traditionally focused on factors such as economic growth or policy evolution. Important additional socio-technical aspects of smart grids emerge from the literature review in this report and therefore need to be incorporated in our scenarios. These can be grouped into four (interlinked) main categories: supply side aspects, demand side aspects, policy and regulation, and technical aspects.

Smart Grid Technologies in Europe: An Overview

The old electricity network infrastructure has proven to be inadequate, with respect to modern challenges such as alternative energy sources, electricity demand and energy saving policies. Moreover, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) seem to have reached an adequate level of reliability and flexibility in order to support a new concept of electricity network—the smart grid. In this work, we will analyse the state-of-the-art of smart grids, in their technical, management, security, and optimization aspects. We will also provide a brief overview of the regulatory aspects involved in the development of a smart grid, mainly from the viewpoint of the European Unio

Embedded Trusted Monitoring and Management Modules for Smart Solar Panels

This paper investigates developing a prototype of smart solar panels. This architecture consists of a panel monitoring module and the central management unit. The monitoring module is to be embedded inside each PV panel making it secure to transfer the trusted data via Wi-Fi to the central Management unit (which can accommodate an array of PV panels in an installation). This module is required for data storage and provides the ability to upload secure data to the cloud. This platform presents the ability to securely manage large numbers of rooftop solar panels in a distributed ledger by implementing block chain algorithm. For achieving this purpose, Module 400 is envisaged to be turned into a Blockchain node as it provides the infrastructure to implement this technology

Power quality and electromagnetic compatibility: special report, session 2

The scope of Session 2 (S2) has been defined as follows by the Session Advisory Group and the Technical Committee: Power Quality (PQ), with the more general concept of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and with some related safety problems in electricity distribution systems. Special focus is put on voltage continuity (supply reliability, problem of outages) and voltage quality (voltage level, flicker, unbalance, harmonics). This session will also look at electromagnetic compatibility (mains frequency to 150 kHz), electromagnetic interferences and electric and magnetic fields issues. Also addressed in this session are electrical safety and immunity concerns (lightning issues, step, touch and transferred voltages). The aim of this special report is to present a synthesis of the present concerns in PQ&EMC, based on all selected papers of session 2 and related papers from other sessions, (152 papers in total). The report is divided in the following 4 blocks: Block 1: Electric and Magnetic Fields, EMC, Earthing systems Block 2: Harmonics Block 3: Voltage Variation Block 4: Power Quality Monitoring Two Round Tables will be organised: - Power quality and EMC in the Future Grid (CIGRE/CIRED WG C4.24, RT 13) - Reliability Benchmarking - why we should do it? What should be done in future? (RT 15

EU Privacy seals project: Challenges and Possible Scope of an EU Privacy Seal Scheme. Final Report Study Deliverable 3.4

The objective of this report is focus on the challenges of implementing an effective EU privacy seal and its possible scope. It returns the focus to privacy and data protection, and presents further groundwork to feed into Task 4 of the Study (Proposals and evaluation of options for an EU-wide privacy seals scheme). Where relevant, research results and analyses of Tasks 1 and 2 are used. First, the report assesses the gaps in current privacy seal sector. Next, it highlights the advantages of, priorities for and possible scope of an EU privacy seal scheme. Eventually, four case studies (CCTV systems, cloud services, smart metering systems and biometric systems) illustrate the possible scope of an EU privacy seal scheme and demonstrate whether an EU privacy seals scheme would bring any added value to privacy and data protection.JRC.G.6-Digital Citizen Securit

iSEA: IoT-based smartphone energy assistant for prompting energy-aware behaviors in commercial buildings

Providing personalized energy-use information to individual occupants enables the adoption of energy-aware behaviors in commercial buildings. However, the implementation of individualized feedback still remains challenging due to the difficulties in collecting personalized data, tracking personal behaviors, and delivering personalized tailored information to individual occupants. Nowadays, the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are used in a variety of applications including real-time monitoring, control, and decision-making due to the flexibility of these technologies for fusing different data streams. In this paper, we propose a novel IoT-based smartphone energy assistant (iSEA) framework which prompts energy-aware behaviors in commercial buildings. iSEA tracks individual occupants through tracking their smartphones, uses a deep learning approach to identify their energy usage, and delivers personalized tailored feedback to impact their usage. iSEA particularly uses an energy-use efficiency index (EEI) to understand behaviors and categorize them into efficient and inefficient behaviors. The iSEA architecture includes four layers: physical, cloud, service, and communication. The results of implementing iSEA in a commercial building with ten occupants over a twelve-week duration demonstrate the validity of this approach in enhancing individualized energy-use behaviors. An average of 34% energy savings was measured by tracking occupants’ EEI by the end of the experimental period. In addition, the results demonstrate that commercial building occupants often ignore controlling over lighting systems at their departure events that leads to wasting energy during non-working hours. By utilizing the existing IoT devices in commercial buildings, iSEA significantly contributes to support research efforts into sensing and enhancing energy-aware behaviors at minimal costs

Managing big data experiments on smartphones

The explosive number of smartphones with ever growing sensing and computing capabilities have brought a paradigm shift to many traditional domains of the computing field. Re-programming smartphones and instrumenting them for application testing and data gathering at scale is currently a tedious and time-consuming process that poses significant logistical challenges. Next generation smartphone applications are expected to be much larger-scale and complex, demanding that these undergo evaluation and testing under different real-world datasets, devices and conditions. In this paper, we present an architecture for managing such large-scale data management experiments on real smartphones. We particularly present the building blocks of our architecture that encompassed smartphone sensor data collected by the crowd and organized in our big data repository. The given datasets can then be replayed on our testbed comprising of real and simulated smartphones accessible to developers through a web-based interface. We present the applicability of our architecture through a case study that involves the evaluation of individual components that are part of a complex indoor positioning system for smartphones, coined Anyplace, which we have developed over the years. The given study shows how our architecture allows us to derive novel insights into the performance of our algorithms and applications, by simplifying the management of large-scale data on smartphones

Implementing an integrated meter and sensor system (IMSS) in existing social housing stock

The current rollout of smart meters for gas and electricity, both in the UK and internationally, will help suppliers to better forecast demand and supply accurate bills to consumers. However, even with an in-home display (IHD), the benefits of a smart meter to a domestic customer are limited by the so-called ‘double invisibility’ of energy [1] and the standardisation of IHD design for an imagined home ‘micro-resource manager’ [2]. Furthermore, low-income households may be limited in the benefits they can reap from such systems; already living within a tight budget, suggestions for further energy-related cost savings may be detrimental to their health and wellbeing. This makes it important that the impact of actions taken to save energy is communicated. This can be done using indoor environmental measures, including carbon dioxide, relative humidity and temperature, as part of an integrated meter and sensor system (IMSS) and an associated IHD or digital application. Such a system gives users the ability to make informed decisions about their energy use and indoor environmental health. This paper explores the potential barriers to implementing an IMSS in practice. It explains how an IMSS was designed, based on a review of meter and sensor systems; details the process is taken to trial the IMSS in 19 social housing properties in the English Midlands; and makes recommendations for a larger scale rollout of IMSSs. The paper also reviews current progress in cloud storage and security as relevant to IMSSs and smart metering

Back-end reference architecture for smart water meter data gathering service

Abstract. The Finnish waterworks industry is on the brink of digitalization. Currently, many of them have started to convert their water meters to smart water meters. However, there is yet no suitable solution for gathering the IoT data from these smart water meters. To answer their arising needs, many pilots and workshops have been conducted. Those pilots have yielded some basic ground rules for their use cases. In this study, those ground rules have been gathered as a set of requirement categories. The categories are studied and analyzed in order to establish a reference architecture for IoT data-gathering systems suitable for waterworks. Using the requirements and the reference architecture, an information system, Dataservice, was implemented by Vesitieto Oy. The system gathers the IoT data and visualizes it to waterworks’ employees. The System was deployed in Microsoft’s cloud service, but other cloud vendors were examined as well. The system has a two-folded database system, the data required by the system, like users and user groups, are held in the SQL database. The IoT-data is held in a NoSQL database. The selected NoSQL database provider was MongoDB as it could be integrated with the cloud provider.Etäluettavien vesimittareiden datapalvelun viitearkkitehtuuri. Tiivistelmä. Suomen vesihuolto on digitalisaation partaalla. Tällä hetkellä monet vesilaitokset ovat alkaneet vaihtaa vanhoja analogisia vesimittareitaan älykkäiksi vesimittareiksi. Vesihuoltolaitokset eivät kuitenkaan ole löytäneet kaikille sopivaa ratkaisua IoT-tiedon keräämiseen älykkäistä vesimittareista. Vastatakseen vesilaitosten tarpeisiin, monia pilotteja ja työpajoja on järjestetty eri yhteistyökumppaneiden kanssa. Näistä eri piloteista on muodostunut käsitys siitä, kuinka vesimittareiden digitalisaatio voidaan ratkaista vesilaitoksilla. Tässä tutkimuksessa eri laitosten väliset perussäännöt on koottu ohjelmistovaatimusluokiksi. Näitä luokkia tutkitaan ja analysoidaan vesilaitoksille sopivan IoT-tiedonkeruujärjestelmän viitearkkitehtuurin luomiseksi. Vaatimuksia ja viitearkkitehtuuria hyödyntäen Vesitieto Oy toteutti tietojärjestelmän nimeltään ”Dataservice”. Järjestelmä kerää IoT-tiedot ja visualisoi ne vesilaitosten työntekijöille. Järjestelmä otettiin käyttöön Microsoftin pilvipalvelussa, mutta myös muita pilvipalvelun palveluntarjoajia tutkittiin. Järjestelmässä on kaksiportainen tietokantajärjestelmä. Järjestelmän tarvitsemat tiedot kuten käyttäjät sekä käyttäjäryhmät pidetään SQLtietokannassa ja IoT-tiedot pidetään NoSQL-tietokannassa. Valittu NoSQL tietokantajärjestelmä oli MongoDB, koska se voitiin integroida pilvipalveluntarjoajan kanssa

iURBAN

iURBAN: Intelligent Urban Energy Tool introduces an urban energy tool integrating different ICT energy management systems (both hardware and software) in two European cities, providing useful data to a novel decision support system that makes available the necessary parameters for the generation and further operation of associated business models. The business models contribute at a global level to efficiently manage and distribute the energy produced and consumed at a local level (city or neighbourhood), incorporating behavioural aspects of the users into the software platform and in general prosumers. iURBAN integrates a smart Decision Support System (smartDSS) that collects real-time or near real-time data, aggregates, analyses and suggest actions of energy consumption and production from different buildings, renewable energy production resources, combined heat and power plants, electric vehicles (EV) charge stations, storage systems, sensors and actuators. The consumption and production data is collected via a heterogeneous data communication protocols and networks. The iURBAN smartDSS through a Local Decision Support System allows the citizens to analyse the consumptions and productions that they are generating, receive information about CO2 savings, advises in demand response and the possibility to participate actively in the energy market. Whilst, through a Centralised Decision Support System allow to utilities, ESCOs, municipalities or other authorised third parties to: Get a continuous snapshot of city energy consumption and productionManage energy consumption and productionForecasting of energy consumptionPlanning of new energy "producers" for the future needs of the cityVisualise, analyse and take decisions of all the end points that are consuming or producing energy in a city level, permitting them to forecast and planning renewable power generation available in the city