37,041 research outputs found
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 networkāthe 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
Energy-Efficient Management of Data Center Resources for Cloud Computing: A Vision, Architectural Elements, and Open Challenges
Cloud computing is offering utility-oriented IT services to users worldwide.
Based on a pay-as-you-go model, it enables hosting of pervasive applications
from consumer, scientific, and business domains. However, data centers hosting
Cloud applications consume huge amounts of energy, contributing to high
operational costs and carbon footprints to the environment. Therefore, we need
Green Cloud computing solutions that can not only save energy for the
environment but also reduce operational costs. This paper presents vision,
challenges, and architectural elements for energy-efficient management of Cloud
computing environments. We focus on the development of dynamic resource
provisioning and allocation algorithms that consider the synergy between
various data center infrastructures (i.e., the hardware, power units, cooling
and software), and holistically work to boost data center energy efficiency and
performance. In particular, this paper proposes (a) architectural principles
for energy-efficient management of Clouds; (b) energy-efficient resource
allocation policies and scheduling algorithms considering quality-of-service
expectations, and devices power usage characteristics; and (c) a novel software
technology for energy-efficient management of Clouds. We have validated our
approach by conducting a set of rigorous performance evaluation study using the
CloudSim toolkit. The results demonstrate that Cloud computing model has
immense potential as it offers significant performance gains as regards to
response time and cost saving under dynamic workload scenarios.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures,Proceedings of the 2010 International Conference
on Parallel and Distributed Processing Techniques and Applications (PDPTA
2010), Las Vegas, USA, July 12-15, 201
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