Klaus Pollhammer

IT-enabled integration of renewables: a concept for the smart power grid

The wide utilisation of information and communication technologies is hoped to enable a more efficient and sustainable operation of electric power grids. This paper analyses the benefits of smart power grids for the integration of renewable energy resources into the existing grid infrastructure. Therefore, the concept of a smart power grid is analysed, and it is shown that it covers more than for example, time-of-use energy tariffs. Further, the communication technologies used for smart grids are discussed, and the challenge of interoperability between the smart grid itself and its active contributors such as functional buildings is shown. A significant share of electrical energy demand is and will be constituted by large functional buildings that are mostly equipped with automation systems and therefore enable a relatively simple IT integration into smart grids. This large potential of thermal storages and flexible consumption processes might be a future key to match demand and supply under the presence of a high share of fluctuating generation from renewables.

A generalized load management gateway coupling smart buildings to the grid

Buildings are currently largely passive participants in the electric grid. As functional and residential buildings are responsible for a sizeable share of energy consumption in the industrialized world, use in demand side management schemes is a promising area in a future smart power grid. As each individual building, especially in the residential sector, offers only limited load shifting potential and associated financial gain, acceptance of demand response programs that require manual user interaction is unlikely. Instead, schemes based on automatic control are a viable alternative. This paper proposes a building agent, which acts as load management gateway, autonomously managing a building as a single unit, utilizing load models on one hand and a generic communication scheme that avoids close coupling of building and grid on the other hand. The agent manipulates the consumption profile of the building in a way, which matches the demands of the smart grid and offers the resulting load shifting potential to the grid.

Modeling of demand side shifting potentials for smart power grids

Outlining the potential of demand response or load shifting techniques is vital for the smart power grid. While different approaches exist on how to model the demand response ability of different consuming nodes or whole subsystems of the power grid, the existing approaches tend to show the maximum amount of shiftable energy at any given point of time without taking into account the correlation between the temporal duration of shifted energy and its amount. A different approach that tries to solve this question is presented. The outlined solution includes the possibility to include the estimation on possible rebound effects that could happen by introducing demand response techniques.

Intelligent streetlight management in a smart city

The intention of a Smart City concept is among other things to increase the energy efficiency of a city. Typically addressed topics are energy management or urban traffic management. Up to now Information and Communication Technology (ICT) measures within a Smart City to increase energy efficiency in public lighting have not been considered in detail. The paper presents an approach of an intelligent streetlight management system being an integral part of a Smart City platform. Field bus technology is used at the field level. Control and monitoring strategies are implemented as web services in the central software. Interoperable interfaces to other parts of the platform are specified. Real-life use cases at test sites in Austria demonstrate the benefits of the system: increased energy efficiency without compromising public safety.

Automated Buildings as Active Energy Consumers

Abstract This paper discusses the role of buildings as active consumers in electrical power grids, with a focus on concepts and implementation possibilities (here: BACnet, ZigBee). In recent years, the idea of energy management using building automation came again into the focus of attention in the light of CO 2 reduction policies and the increasing need to reduce energy consumption. Large functional buildings hold a significant share in total energy demand, so it is promising to make use of existing automation infrastructures to increase energy efficiency in buildings. Energy savings can however not only be achieved in the building itself, but also by optimizing the interaction between the building and the energy supply infrastructure, mainly the electrical power grid. Instead of being passive energy consumers, buildings have the ability to shift energy consumption in time and therefore can act as active consumers, supporting the power grid and integration of renewables.

Erfolgsversprechende Demand-Response-Empfehlungen im Energieversorgungssystem 2020

ZusammenfassungAutomatisiertes Lastmanagement hat das Potenzial, in einem zukünftigen, mit Kommunikationsinfrastruktur ausgestattetem Stromnetz durch Verschiebung von elektrischen Lasten trotz einer hohen Dichte an erneuerbarer Erzeugung die Leistungsbalance zu gewährleisten. Dieses Paper stellt eine systematische Herangehensweise vor, die eine umfassende Bewertung und Weiterentwicklung von Lastmanagement-Szenarien ermöglicht. Es wird ein neuer Ansatz zur Integration der Entwicklung und Bewertung solcher Szenarien vorgestellt und vier erfolgsversprechende Modelle von Komponenten zukünftiger elektrischer Energieversorgungssysteme eingehender analysiert. Das Problem fehlender Umsetzungen wird anhand dieser Szenarien beispielhaft für Österreich durch eine interdisziplinäre Betrachtung des Phänomens Lastmanagement hinsichtlich technischer, sozialer, ökonomischer und ökologischer Aspekte untersucht. Ergebnis dieser Betrachtung sind neben Analyseergebnissen eine Bewertung der Szenarien und die daraus gewonnenen Empfehlungen für neue Rahmensetzer und die Forschungsförderung.

Smart energy grids in Austria - innovative solutions and concepts

Through the increasing electricity generation from renewable energy sources the power infrastructure not only in Europe received new stimuli to find unique and novel solutions. Especially the integration of information exchange into the infrastructure lead to the definition of the actual research topic of smart grids. Austrian researchers and industry alike have built a strong community over the years that brought quite a number of interesting and innovative approaches and solutions to very different challenges the smart grid still has to face. This work will give an overview on the Austrian solutions and concepts for a smart energy grid.

KOROS Initiative: Automatized Throwing and Catching for Material Transportation

Catching a thrown object has increasingly been a subject of research. The reason has largely been to demonstrate the advances in robot technology. Besides this academic usage also the application of throwing and catching for material transport has been proposed. Within the KOROS initiative at the Vienna University of Technology the transport-by-throwing approach will be developed further. Based on multiple cameras and advanced robotic arms a practical evaluation of the approach will be done. The realization with state of the art equipment will enable to identify possible fields of application as well as current limitations of the transport-by-throwing approach. Especially soft throwing and catching, exposing the transported objects to minimal forces, are of main interest.

Open traffic data platform for scenario-based control

Integrating formally separated control systems of a city by means of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is well known under the term “Smart City”. The benefit is a more energy and cost efficient city. In the domain of road traffic an open traffic data platform shall be the base for smart road traffic infrastructure and services. The idea is to pool available data from road side sensors as well as aggregated data from sensor fusion units at a single place. Due to a highly scalable technology the platform can provide data to any system. The results are that fewer sensors are required for more accurate and efficient services.

Traffic-Adaptive Control of LED-Based Streetlights [Industry Forum] Public lighting in urban environments accounts for about 50% of the electricity con

In this article, a new intelligent street lighting design known as integrated traffic-adaptive control is presented. In general, the strategy is that the luminance intensity of streetlights is either increased or reduced in multiple steps depending on the traffic flow. In a nutshell, higher traffic volume means higher luminance intensity, and vice versa, according to the method specified in the guideline of International Commission on Illumination CIE 115. Data on traffic flow comes from existing roadside infrastructure connected to other management systems, like traffic management, and is interfaced with streetlight management in a common platform. The benefit of such a holistic system approach is that energy consumption of public lighting is reduced without high investments in sensor infrastructure (since existing sensors are used) and without compromising road safety (due to the continuous adjustment of luminance intensity to the traffic volume).