Unlocking the potential of the smart metering technology: How can regulation level the playing-field for new services in smart grids?

By integrating a communications system with the existing power grid, smart grids provide end-to-end connectivity. This enables all entities and components integrated in the electricity supply system to exchange information without knowing the network's structure. New services and applications such as demand response or virtual power plants that will aid to improve and optimize the use of electricity depend on the availability of a smart grid communication network. End-to-end communication networks require that the missing communications gap between consumers' premises and the remaining energy network is bridged by deploying an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). Given the current liberalized electricity markets' structure incumbent distribution system operators (DSOs) will control the AMI and the meter data. This gives rise to concerns about anti-competitiveness. We argue that leveraging the AMI in a social welfare maximizing way requires non-discriminatory access for all entitled parties to the (1) AMI and the (2) meter data through (3) interoperable standards. We discuss possible regulatory remedies to ensure a level playing-field for innovative services in smart grids and consider implications for research and regulation. --Regulation,Smart Grid,Smart Meter,Antitrust

Pre-Congestion Notification Encoding Comparison

DiffServ mechanisms have been developed to support Quality of Service (QoS). However, the level of assurance that can be provided with DiffServ without substantial over-provisioning is limited. Pre-Congestion Notification (PCN) investigates the use of per-flow admission control to provide the required service guarantees for the admitted traffic. While admission control will protect the QoS under\ud normal operating conditions, an additional flow termination mechanism is necessary in the times of heavy congestion (e.g. caused by route changes due to link or node failure).\ud Encoding and their transport are required to carry the congestion and pre-congestion information from the congestion and pre-congestion points to the decision points. This document provides a survey of\ud several encoding methods, using comparisons amongst them as a way to explain their strengths and weaknesses.\u

The Role of Community Values in Wind Energy Development: Exploring the Benefits and Applications of Community Wind for Reducing Local Opposition to Wind Energy Systems

Worldwide, wind energy generation is growing rapidly as a cleaner and less invasive alternative to traditional fossil-fuel energy sources. Yet, in the United States, the advancement of wind energy has been stunted by three factors: (1) the uncertainty of the federal Production Tax Credit; (2) the lack of transmission lines connecting wind projects to electricity grids; and (3) enduring local cultural and aesthetic objections to wind turbines. Frustrated with the imbalanced allocation of costs and benefits imposed by most wind energy projects, some individuals and municipalities have deployed zoning laws, nuisance claims, or environmentalist arguments to discourage wind energy development in their area. “Community wind” is a model of wind energy generation that improves residents’ perception of turbines by using local ownership, services and utility grids to concentrate the economic benefits of wind power in the communities that produce it. This paper sets forth a proposal for applying the community wind model in a suburban context, through the mechanism of the homeowner’s association (HOA). HOAs are uniquely situated to implement community wind to lower their energy costs, provide affordable housing, enhance local schools, and shift Americans’ perception of wind farms in a more positive direction

Active hardware metering for intellectual property protection and security

Abstract We introduce the first active hardware metering scheme that aims to protect integrated circuits (IC) intellectual property (IP) against piracy and runtime tampering. The novel metering method simultaneously employs inherent unclonable variability in modern manufacturing technology, and functionality preserving alternations of the structural IC specifications. Active metering works by enabling the designers to lock each IC and to remotely disable it. The objectives are realized by adding new states and transitions to the original finite state machine (FSM) to create boosted finite state machines(BFSM) of the pertinent design. A unique and unpredictable ID generated by an IC is utilized to place an BFSM into the power-up state upon activation. The designer, knowing the transition table, is the only one who can generate input sequences required to bring the BFSM into the functional initial (reset) state. To facilitate remote disabling of ICs, black hole states are integrated within the BFSM. We introduce nine types of potential attacks against the proposed active metering method. We further describe a number of countermeasures that must be taken to preserve the security of active metering against the potential attacks. The implementation details of the method with the objectives of being low-overhead, unclonable, obfuscated, stable, while having a diverse set of keys is presented. The active metering method was implemented, synthesized and mapped on the standard benchmark circuits. Experimental evaluations illustrate that the method has a low-overhead in terms of power, delay, and area, while it is extremely resilient against the considered attacks

Ten years after: What are the effects of business method patents in financial services?

In recent years, the courts have determined that business methods can be patented, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted some 12,000 patents of this sort. Has the availability of patents for business methods increased the rate of innovation in the U.S. financial sector? The available evidence suggests that there has been no significant change in the aggregate trend of R&D investments made by financial firms. In "Ten Years After: What Are the Effects of Business Method Patents in Financial Services?," Bob Hunt discusses how recent court decisions and proposed federal legislation may change how firms enforce their patents. In addition, he outlines some of the remaining challenges that business method patents pose for financial companies.Patents