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.

Scenarios for the development of smart grids in the UK : literature review

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Scenarios for the Development of Smart Grids in the UK: Literature Review

This Working Paper reviews the existing literature on the socio-technical aspects of smart grid development. This work was undertaken as part of the Scenarios for the Development of Smart Grids in the UK project

Synthesizing Generic Experimental Environments for Simulation

International audienceExperiments play an important role in parallel and distributed computing. Simulation is a common experimental technique that relies on abstractions of the tested application and execution environment but offers reproducibility of results and fast exploration of numerous scenarios. This article focuses on setting up the experimental environment of a simulation run. First we analyze the requirements expressed by different research communities. As the existing tools of the literature are too specific, we then propose a more generic experimental environment synthesizer called SIMULACRUM. This tool allows its users to select a model of a currently deployed computing grid or generate a random environment. Then the user can extract a subset of it that fulfills his/her requirements. Finally the user can export the corresponding XML representation

Evaluation of Reallocation Heuristics for Moldable Tasks in Computational Dedicated and non Dedicated Grids

Grid services often consist of remote sequential or rigid parallel application executions. However, moldable parallel applications, linear algebra solvers for example, are of great interest but requires dynamic tuning which has mostly to be done interactively if performances are needed. Thus, their grid execution depends on a remote and transparent submission to a possibly different batch scheduler on each site, and means an automatic tuning of the job according to the local load. In this report we study the benefits of having a middleware able to automatically submit and reallocate requests from one site to another when it is also able to configure the services by tuning their number of processors and their walltime. In this context, we evaluate the benefits of such mechanisms on four multi-cluster Grid setups, where the platform is either composed of several heterogeneous or homogeneous, dedicated or non dedicated clusters. Different scenarios are explored using simulations of real cluster traces from different origins. Results show that a simple scheduling heuristic is good and often the best. Indeed, it is faster and thus can take more jobs into account while having a small execution time. Moreover, users can expect more jobs finishing sooner and a gain on the average job response time between 10\% and 40\% in most cases if this reallocation mechanism combined to auto-tuning capabilities is implemented in a Grid framework. The implementation and the maintenance of this heuristic coupled to the migration mechanism in a Grid middleware is also simpler because less transfers are involved.L'appel à des services présents sur les grilles de calcul correspondent généralement à l'exécution d'une application séquentielle ou rigide. Cependant, il est possible d'avoir des applications parallèles moldables, telles que des solveurs linéaires, qui sont d'un grand intérêt, mais qui demandent une adaptation dynamique pour obtenir de bonnes performances. Leur exécution nécessite donc d'avoir un accès distant et transparent à différents gestionnaires de ressources, demandant donc une adaptation automatique de l'application en fonction de la charge locale. Dans ce rapport, nous étudions les bénéfices découlant de l'utilisation d'un intergiciel de grille capable de soumettre et de réallouer des requêtes d'un site à l'autre tout en configurant automatiquement les services en choisissant le nombre de processeurs ainsi que la durée d'exécution estimée. Dans ce contexte, nous évaluons les gains apportés par de tels mécanismes sur quatre grilles de calcul différentes où la plate-forme est composée de plusieurs grappes, homogène ou hétérogènes, dédiées ou non. Nous explorons différents scénarios par la simulation de traces de tâches provenant de réelles exécutions. Les résultats montrent que l'utilisation d'une heuristique d'ordonnancement simple est efficace, souvent amplement suffisante, voire la meilleure. En effet, elle est plus rapide à l'exécution et permet de prendre plus de requêtes en compte. Les utilisateurs peuvent espérer une majorité de requêtes terminant plus tôt si elle est utilisée, ainsi qu'une réduction du temps d'attente du résultat d'entre 10\% et 40\% dans la plupart des cas lorsque le mécanisme de réallocation couplé à l'adaptation automatique sont présents dans l'intergiciel. De plus, l'implantation et la maintenance de cette heuristique couplée au mécanisme de migration de tâches dans un intergiciel de grille est aussi plus facile car moins de tranferts sont nécessaires

Intermediate QoS Prototype for the EDGI Infrastructure

This document provides the first deliverable of EDGI JRA2. It is produced by the INRIA team, the SZTAKI team, the LAL/IN2P3 team and the University of Coimbra team. This document aims at describing achievements and results of JRA2 tasks "Advanced QoS Scheduler and Oracle" and "Support In Science Gateway". Hybrid Distributed Computing Infrastructures (DCIs) allow users to combine Grids, Desktop Grids, Clouds, etc. to obtain for their users large computing capabilities. The EDGI infrastructure belongs to this kind of DCIs. The document presents the SpeQuloS framework to provide quality of service (QoS) for application executed on the EDGI infrastructure. It also introduces EDGI QoS portal, an user-friendly and integrated access to QoS features for users of EDGI infrastructure. In this document, we first introduce new results from JRA2.1 task, which collected and analyzed batch execution on Desktop Grid. Then, we present the advanced Cloud Scheduling and Oracle strategies designed inside the SpeQuloS framework (task JRA2.2). We demonstrate efficiency of these strategies using performance evaluation carried out with simulations. Next, we introduce Credit System architecture and QoS user portal as part of the JRA2 Support In Science Gateway (task JRA2.3). Finally, we conclude and provide references to JRA2 production.Ce document fournit le premier livrable pour la tâche JRA2 du projet européen European Desktop Grid Initiative (FP7 EDGI). Il est produit par les équipes de l'INRIA, de SZTAKI, du LAL/IN2P3 et de l'Université de Coimbra. Ce document vise à décrire les réalisations et les résultats qui concernent la qualité de service pour l'infrastructure de grilles de PCs européenne EDGI

Scenarios for the Development of Smart Grids in the UK: Literature Review

This Working Paper reviews the existing literature on the socio-technical aspects of smart grid development. This work was undertaken as part of the Scenarios for the Development of Smart Grids in the UK project

Contributions to Desktop Grid Computing : From High Throughput Computing to Data-Intensive Sciences on Hybrid Distributed Computing Infrastructures

Since the mid 90’s, Desktop Grid Computing - i.e the idea of using a large number of remote PCs distributed on the Internet to execute large parallel applications - has proved to be an efficient paradigm to provide a large computational power at the fraction of the cost of a dedicated computing infrastructure.This document presents my contributions over the last decade to broaden the scope of Desktop Grid Computing. My research has followed three different directions. The first direction has established new methods to observe and characterize Desktop Grid resources and developed experimental platforms to test and validate our approach in conditions close to reality. The second line of research has focused on integrating Desk- top Grids in e-science Grid infrastructure (e.g. EGI), which requires to address many challenges such as security, scheduling, quality of service, and more. The third direction has investigated how to support large-scale data management and data intensive applica- tions on such infrastructures, including support for the new and emerging data-oriented programming models.This manuscript not only reports on the scientific achievements and the technologies developed to support our objectives, but also on the international collaborations and projects I have been involved in, as well as the scientific mentoring which motivates my candidature for the Habilitation `a Diriger les Recherches