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

Smart Vehicle to Grid Interface Project: Electromobility Management System Architecture and Field Test Results

This paper presents and discusses the electromobility management system developed in the context of the SMARTV2G project, enabling the automatic control of plug-in electric vehicles' (PEVs') charging processes. The paper describes the architecture and the software/hardware components of the electromobility management system. The focus is put in particular on the implementation of a centralized demand side management control algorithm, which allows remote real time control of the charging stations in the field, according to preferences and constraints expressed by all the actors involved (in particular the distribution system operator and the PEV users). The results of the field tests are reported and discussed, highlighting critical issues raised from the field experience.Comment: To appear in IEEE International Electric Vehicle Conference (IEEE IEVC 2014

Challenges and complexities in application of LCA approaches in the case of ICT for a sustainable future

In this work, three of many ICT-specific challenges of LCA are discussed. First, the inconsistency versus uncertainty is reviewed with regard to the meta-technological nature of ICT. As an example, the semiconductor technologies are used to highlight the complexities especially with respect to energy and water consumption. The need for specific representations and metric to separately assess products and technologies is discussed. It is highlighted that applying product-oriented approaches would result in abandoning or disfavoring of new technologies that could otherwise help toward a better world. Second, several believed-untouchable hot spots are highlighted to emphasize on their importance and footprint. The list includes, but not limited to, i) User Computer-Interfaces (UCIs), especially screens and displays, ii) Network-Computer Interlaces (NCIs), such as electronic and optical ports, and iii) electricity power interfaces. In addition, considering cross-regional social and economic impacts, and also taking into account the marketing nature of the need for many ICT's product and services in both forms of hardware and software, the complexity of End of Life (EoL) stage of ICT products, technologies, and services is explored. Finally, the impact of smart management and intelligence, and in general software, in ICT solutions and products is highlighted. In particular, it is observed that, even using the same technology, the significance of software could be highly variable depending on the level of intelligence and awareness deployed. With examples from an interconnected network of data centers managed using Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) technology and smart cooling systems, it is shown that the unadjusted assessments could be highly uncertain, and even inconsistent, in calculating the management component's significance on the ICT impacts.Comment: 10 pages. Preprint/Accepted of a paper submitted to the ICT4S Conferenc

Evaluating load balancing policies for performance and energy-efficiency

Nowadays, more and more increasingly hard computations are performed in challenging fields like weather forecasting, oil and gas exploration, and cryptanalysis. Many of such computations can be implemented using a computer cluster with a large number of servers. Incoming computation requests are then, via a so-called load balancing policy, distributed over the servers to ensure optimal performance. Additionally, being able to switch-off some servers during low period of workload, gives potential to reduced energy consumption. Therefore, load balancing forms, albeit indirectly, a trade-off between performance and energy consumption. In this paper, we introduce a syntax for load-balancing policies to dynamically select a server for each request based on relevant criteria, including the number of jobs queued in servers, power states of servers, and transition delays between power states of servers. To evaluate many policies, we implement two load balancers in: (i) iDSL, a language and tool-chain for evaluating service-oriented systems, and (ii) a simulation framework in AnyLogic. Both implementations are successfully validated by comparison of the results.Comment: In Proceedings QAPL'16, arXiv:1610.0769

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.

Energy challenges for ICT

The energy consumption from the expanding use of information and communications technology (ICT) is unsustainable with present drivers, and it will impact heavily on the future climate change. However, ICT devices have the potential to contribute signi - cantly to the reduction of CO2 emission and enhance resource e ciency in other sectors, e.g., transportation (through intelligent transportation and advanced driver assistance systems and self-driving vehicles), heating (through smart building control), and manu- facturing (through digital automation based on smart autonomous sensors). To address the energy sustainability of ICT and capture the full potential of ICT in resource e - ciency, a multidisciplinary ICT-energy community needs to be brought together cover- ing devices, microarchitectures, ultra large-scale integration (ULSI), high-performance computing (HPC), energy harvesting, energy storage, system design, embedded sys- tems, e cient electronics, static analysis, and computation. In this chapter, we introduce challenges and opportunities in this emerging eld and a common framework to strive towards energy-sustainable ICT

Energy management in communication networks: a journey through modelling and optimization glasses

The widespread proliferation of Internet and wireless applications has produced a significant increase of ICT energy footprint. As a response, in the last five years, significant efforts have been undertaken to include energy-awareness into network management. Several green networking frameworks have been proposed by carefully managing the network routing and the power state of network devices. Even though approaches proposed differ based on network technologies and sleep modes of nodes and interfaces, they all aim at tailoring the active network resources to the varying traffic needs in order to minimize energy consumption. From a modeling point of view, this has several commonalities with classical network design and routing problems, even if with different objectives and in a dynamic context. With most researchers focused on addressing the complex and crucial technological aspects of green networking schemes, there has been so far little attention on understanding the modeling similarities and differences of proposed solutions. This paper fills the gap surveying the literature with optimization modeling glasses, following a tutorial approach that guides through the different components of the models with a unified symbolism. A detailed classification of the previous work based on the modeling issues included is also proposed