Digitalisation and New Business Models in Energy Sector

This paper reviews digitalisation in energy sector by looking at the business models of 40 interesting new start-up energy companies from around the world. These start-ups have been facilitated by the rise of distributed generation, much of it intermittent in nature. We review Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Blockchain applications in energy sector. We discuss the rise of prosumers and small-scale renewable generation, highlighting the role of Feed-in-Tariffs (FITs), the Distribution System Platform concept and the potential for Peer-to-Peer (P2P) trading. Our aim is to help energy regulators calibrate their support new business models

AngelCast: cloud-based peer-assisted live streaming using optimized multi-tree construction

Increasingly, commercial content providers (CPs) offer streaming solutions using peer-to-peer (P2P) architectures, which promises significant scalabil- ity by leveraging clients’ upstream capacity. A major limitation of P2P live streaming is that playout rates are constrained by clients’ upstream capac- ities – typically much lower than downstream capacities – which limit the quality of the delivered stream. To leverage P2P architectures without sacri- ficing quality, CPs must commit additional resources to complement clients’ resources. In this work, we propose a cloud-based service AngelCast that enables CPs to complement P2P streaming. By subscribing to AngelCast, a CP is able to deploy extra resources (angel), on-demand from the cloud, to maintain a desirable stream quality. Angels do not download the whole stream, nor are they in possession of it. Rather, angels only relay the minimal fraction of the stream necessary to achieve the desired quality. We provide a lower bound on the minimum angel capacity needed to maintain a desired client bit-rate, and develop a fluid model construction to achieve it. Realizing the limitations of the fluid model construction, we design a practical multi- tree construction that captures the spirit of the optimal construction, and avoids its limitations. We present a prototype implementation of AngelCast, along with experimental results confirming the feasibility of our service.Supported in part by NSF awards #0720604, #0735974, #0820138, #0952145, #1012798 #1012798 #1430145 #1414119. (0720604 - NSF; 0735974 - NSF; 0820138 - NSF; 0952145 - NSF; 1012798 - NSF; 1430145 - NSF; 1414119 - NSF

A Persistent Simulation Environment for Autonomous Systems

The age of Autonomous Unmanned Aircraft Systems (AUAS) is creating new challenges for the accreditation and certification requiring new standards, policies and procedures that sanction whether a UAS is safe to fly. Establishing a basis for certification of autonomous systems via research into trust and trustworthiness is the focus of Autonomy Teaming and TRAjectories for Complex Trusted Operational Reliability (ATTRACTOR), a new NASA Convergent Aeronautics Solution (CAS) project. Simulation Environments to test and evaluate AUAS decision making may be a low-cost solution to help certify that various AUAS systems are trustworthy enough to be allowed to fly in current general and commercial aviation airspace. NASA is working to build a peer-to-peer persistent simulation (P3 Sim) environment. The P3 Sim will be a Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) environment were AUAS avatars can interact with a complex dynamic environment and each other. The focus of the effort is to provide AUAS researchers a low-cost intuitive testing environment that will aid training for and assessment of decisions made by autonomous systems such as AUAS. This presentation focuses on the design approach and challenges faced in development of the P3 Sim Environment is support of investigating trustworthiness of autonomous systems

Practical service placement approach for microservices architecture

Community networks (CNs) have gained momentum in the last few years with the increasing number of spontaneously deployed WiFi hotspots and home networks. These networks, owned and managed by volunteers, offer various services to their members and to the public. To reduce the complexity of service deployment, community micro-clouds have recently emerged as a promising enabler for the delivery of cloud services to community users. By putting services closer to consumers, micro-clouds pursue not only a better service performance, but also a low entry barrier for the deployment of mainstream Internet services within the CN. Unfortunately, the provisioning of the services is not so simple. Due to the large and irregular topology, high software and hardware diversity of CNs, it requires of aPeer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Hybrid client-server and P2P network for web-based collaborative 3D design

National audienceOur proposed research project is to enable 3D distributed visualization and manipulation involving collaborative effort through the use of web-based technologies. Our project resulted from a wide collaborative application research fields: Computer Aided Design (CAD), Building Information Modeling (BIM) or Product Life Cycle Management (PLM) where design tasks are often performed in teams and need a fluent communication system. The system allows distributed remote assembling in 3D scenes with real-time updates for the users. This paper covers this feature using hybrid networking solution: a client-server architecture (REST) for 3D rendering (WebGL) and data persistence (NoSQL) associated to an automatically built peer-to-peer (P2P) mesh for real-time communication between the clients (WebRTC). The approach is demonstrated through the development of a web-platform prototype focusing on the easy manipulation, fine rendering and light update messages for all participating users. We provide an architecture and a prototype to enable users to design in 3D together in real time with the benefits of web based online collaboration