Standards, Patents, and the National Smart Grid

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is charged with overseeing the identification and selection of hundreds of standards that will be required to implement the national Smart Grid project. However, the benefits that could be realized from Smart Grid standardization could be threatened by a growing number of patents that cover Smart Grid architecture and technologies. If such patents are not revealed until technology is broadly distributed throughout the network (“locked-in”), significant disruption could occur when patent holders seek to collect unanticipated rents from large segments of the market. Moreover, even if patents are revealed early in the standardization process, there is currently no efficient way for market participants to assess the cost of implementing the standardized technologies covered by these patents before lock-in. As a result, costs to consumers can increase, competitors can be shut-out from the market, and the standardization process itself can be subverted. And far from being hypothetical, each of these scenarios has already occurred in industries that rely heavily on standardization, such as computer memory and telecommunications. In the case of the Smart Grid, however, the risk is even greater, as Smart Grid standards are mandated by law and have the potential to be adopted into both federal and state regulation, making lock-in nearly impossible to avoid and providing even greater leverage to patent holders. Given the critical importance of the national Smart Grid, it is imperative that the governmental agencies overseeing the identification and development of Smart Grid standards take appropriate measures to ensure that broad, national implementation of standardized Smart Grid technology is not hindered either by undue economic burdens imposed by patent holders or the threat of costly and disruptive patent litigation. In this article, I lay out a number of legal options available to the U.S. federal government for addressing potential patent encumbrances on Smart Grid standards. These range from relatively modest measures such as priority-setting within existing regulatory frameworks to more interventionist approaches, such as federal march-in rights, compulsory licensing, legislative exclusions of injunctive relief and the formation of patent pools

Wind Technology: A Framework for the Evaluation of Innovations’ Impacts on the Diffusion Potential

This paper proposes a framework based on which innovations in wind power technologies can be evaluated from the standpoint of their contribution to diffusion expansion. The framework helps build up a missing link between the technical literature on innovations and policy-oriented contributions concerned with the diffusion potential of wind power in national energy systems. The ideas are applied for the evaluation of wind technology innovations adopted in Spain. The framework can help policy-makers prioritize their innovation objectives and funding, so as to support the adoption of innovations that deserve the highest priority, given the country’s resources and energy system characteristics

DRIVER Technology Watch Report

This report is part of the Discovery Workpackage (WP4) and is the third report out of four deliverables. The objective of this report is to give an overview of the latest technical developments in the world of digital repositories, digital libraries and beyond, in order to serve as theoretical and practical input for the technical DRIVER developments, especially those focused on enhanced publications. This report consists of two main parts, one part focuses on interoperability standards for enhanced publications, the other part consists of three subchapters, which give a landscape picture of current and surfacing technologies and communities crucial to DRIVER. These three subchapters contain the GRID, CRIS and LTP communities and technologies. Every chapter contains a theoretical explanation, followed by case studies and the outcomes and opportunities for DRIVER in this field

Methods for assessing the contribution of renewable technologies to energy security: the electricity sector of Fiji

In recent years, renewable energy technologies have been advocated in Fiji on the basis that they improve energy security and serve as a risk-mitigation measure against oil price volatility. Despite this, there have been no published attempts to measure the impact of renewable technologies on energy security or to assess the major threats to that security. This analysis is important if the benefits of renewable energy sources in Fiji are to be evaluated adequately. This article considers the key threats to the security of electricity supply in Fiji for grid-connected and off-grid areas and uses these as a basis for a definition of energy security that is relevant to Fiji. It proposes a method for assessing the potential contribution of renewable technologies to the security of electricity supply in Fiji, based on mean-variance portfolio theory used in financial markets

Service Orientation and the Smart Grid state and trends

The energy market is undergoing major changes, the most notable of which is the transition from a hierarchical closed system toward a more open one highly based on a “smart” information-rich infrastructure. This transition calls for new information and communication technologies infrastructures and standards to support it. In this paper, we review the current state of affairs and the actual technologies with respect to such transition. Additionally, we highlight the contact points between the needs of the future grid and the advantages brought by service-oriented architectures.

A review of microgrid development in the United States – A decade of progress on policies, demonstrations, controls, and software tools

Microgrids have become increasingly popular in the United States. Supported by favorable federal and local policies, microgrid projects can provide greater energy stability and resilience within a project site or community. This paper reviews major federal, state, and utility-level policies driving microgrid development in the United States. Representative U.S. demonstration projects are selected and their technical characteristics and non-technical features are introduced. The paper discusses trends in the technology development of microgrid systems as well as microgrid control methods and interactions within the electricity market. Software tools for microgrid design, planning, and performance analysis are illustrated with each tool's core capability. Finally, the paper summarizes the successes and lessons learned during the recent expansion of the U.S. microgrid industry that may serve as a reference for other countries developing their own microgrid industries

Development of Grid e-Infrastructure in South-Eastern Europe

Over the period of 6 years and three phases, the SEE-GRID programme has established a strong regional human network in the area of distributed scientific computing and has set up a powerful regional Grid infrastructure. It attracted a number of user communities and applications from diverse fields from countries throughout the South-Eastern Europe. From the infrastructure point view, the first project phase has established a pilot Grid infrastructure with more than 20 resource centers in 11 countries. During the subsequent two phases of the project, the infrastructure has grown to currently 55 resource centers with more than 6600 CPUs and 750 TBs of disk storage, distributed in 16 participating countries. Inclusion of new resource centers to the existing infrastructure, as well as a support to new user communities, has demanded setup of regionally distributed core services, development of new monitoring and operational tools, and close collaboration of all partner institution in managing such a complex infrastructure. In this paper we give an overview of the development and current status of SEE-GRID regional infrastructure and describe its transition to the NGI-based Grid model in EGI, with the strong SEE regional collaboration.Comment: 22 pages, 12 figures, 4 table

Innovative in silico approaches to address avian flu using grid technology

The recent years have seen the emergence of diseases which have spread very quickly all around the world either through human travels like SARS or animal migration like avian flu. Among the biggest challenges raised by infectious emerging diseases, one is related to the constant mutation of the viruses which turns them into continuously moving targets for drug and vaccine discovery. Another challenge is related to the early detection and surveillance of the diseases as new cases can appear just anywhere due to the globalization of exchanges and the circulation of people and animals around the earth, as recently demonstrated by the avian flu epidemics. For 3 years now, a collaboration of teams in Europe and Asia has been exploring some innovative in silico approaches to better tackle avian flu taking advantage of the very large computing resources available on international grid infrastructures. Grids were used to study the impact of mutations on the effectiveness of existing drugs against H5N1 and to find potentially new leads active on mutated strains. Grids allow also the integration of distributed data in a completely secured way. The paper presents how we are currently exploring how to integrate the existing data sources towards a global surveillance network for molecular epidemiology.Comment: 7 pages, submitted to Infectious Disorders - Drug Target

The disrupters: Lessons for low-carbon innovation from the new wave of environmental pioneers

We need disruptive forms of innovation 13 cheaper, easier-to-use alternatives to existing products or services, often produced by non-traditional players for previously ignored customers. This report tells the stories of eight such "disrupters" and draws wider lessons for low-carbon innovation. Its recommendations include: 1. Government should provide an enabling policy framework within which low-carbon innovation ca