Pedro S. Moura

ENERsip: M2M-based platform to enable energy efficiency within energy-positive neighbourhoods

This paper presents the main features of the EU R&D project ENERsip. The main objective of this FP7 ICT project is to design, develop, and test an adaptive service-oriented M2M-based platform that enables optimizing, in near real-time, and saving energy by remotely monitoring, controlling and coordinating power generation and consumption within neighborhoods with energy-positive buildings. The paper describes the system architecture designed to meet such requirements, putting special emphasis on the M2M communication infrastructure. The novel services that will be delivered on top of such M2M communication infrastructure and the potential users who will enjoy them are also presented. Finally, the ENERsip platform validation plan is outlined.

Modeling the Neighborhood Area Networks of the Smart Grid

ICT and M2M communications will definitely play a key role on making the Smart Grid dream comes true. However, there are many available communications technologies that can be applied to this area, so an effective method to evaluate and compare them is required. Simulations represent a powerful, flexible, and cost-effective solution to achieve this goal, but the relevance of their results tightly depends on how well the model behind the simulations fits real world scenarios. This paper presents a model to evaluate the typical M2M communications architecture for the Neighborhood Area Networks of the Smart Grid. This model considers bidirectional real-time communications in realistic scenarios, which have been developed based on data collected from the EU FP7 project ENERsip. In order to maximize the impact of the model, medium to long-term scenarios are also considered.

Managing the Charging of Electrical Vehicles: Impacts on the Electrical Grid and on the Environment

Electric vehicles are seen as an option to reduce greenhouse emissions, directly related with the electricity generation mix and with the time of charging due to the variations of the generation sources during the day. At the same time, with their widespread adoption the increase in the demand for electricity to charge these vehicles could pose significant challenges to the electrical grid in terms of additional load due to unmanaged charge strategies. In order to mitigate these problems, the charging of the electrical vehicles must be managed. This paper presents the development of a system architecture to dynamically control the charging of electric vehicles to maintain the proper operation of the local distribution grid and minimize the environmental impact. The hardware consists of two modules, a meter and controllable plugs both with communication capabilities, while the software consists in a forecast and scheduler module. The forecast module calculates the load based on the power consumption behavior and uses the renewable generation forecast to assign the best time slot to charge the vehicle. The system aims to minimize the load peaks and flatten the load profile, while minimizing the environmental impacts. Based on the user preferences, system characteristics, consumption and renewable generation forecast, the system will assign the most suitable time slot to charge the electric vehicle. For the case of multiple electric vehicles, the system will schedule their charge based on a calculated priority level, in order to maintain a reliable operation of the local electrical grid.

Large Scale Integration of Wind Power Generation

In a scenario of large scale penetration of renewable production from wind and other intermittent resources, it is fundamental that the electric systems have appropriate means to compensate the effects of the variability and randomness of the wind power availability. This concern was traditionally met by the promotion of the wind resource studies and in the identification of solutions based on reversible hydropower dams. However, in the electric system planning, other options deserve to be evaluated. This chapter evaluates the methods and technologies that can be used to minimize the intermittence, such as grid integration, technical distribution of the generators, geographic distribution of the generators, improved forecasting techniques, power plants providing operational and capacity reserve, interconnection with other grid systems, curtailment of intermittent technology, distributed generation, complementarily between renewable sources, energy storage, demand-side management, and demand-side response.

Modeling Smart Grid neighborhoods with the ENERsip ontology

We model the domain of knowledge of energy efficiency in Smart Grid neighborhoods.The resulting ontology is developed using Ontology Web Language.The ontology captures vocabulary, taxonomy, and engineering and business semantics.The ontology is a valuable reference for project development and validation.The ontology is a valuable reference for further research in this field. The electricity consumption in the buildings sector has been steadily increasing during the last decade, up to the point that energy efficiency in this sector has become a major problem for governments, utilities, customers, and the environment. The foreseen high penetration of distributed micro-generation facilities based on renewables can help to reduce the environmental footprint of buildings and households, although the complexity of managing effectively the electric grid increases dramatically under these conditions. The IEEE 2030 standard for interoperability in the Smart Grid remarks upon the importance of well-defined data models in such complex scenarios and puts emphasis on the benefits of ontologies and OWL (Web Ontology Language) for this purpose. This paper presents an OWL-based ontology that formally defines the vocabulary and taxonomy and captures the engineering and business semantics of this domain of knowledge (i.e., energy efficiency in the so-called nZEN - nearly Zero-Energy Neighborhoods). This ontology has been defined under the scope of the EU (European Union) research project ENERsip. The paper also highlights the main benefits the ontology brought to all the phases of the project life cycle, as well as how future work can make the most out of it.

DESALINATION WITH WIND AND WAVE POWER

Seawater desalination can be an attractive alternative to ensure a secure source of water. However, the energy requirements for that process are high and can be a problem, mainly in isolated areas. Renewable energies are the best way to supply the energy needs, because can be available near the desalination plants and avoid environmental/availability problems associated with fossil fuels. In this paper two forms of renewable energies particularly suited for desalination are described: wind power and wave power.

Comprehensive validation of an ICT platform to support energy efficiency in future smart grid scenarios

The steady increase of electricity consumption in the EU household sector during the last decades, has made energy efficiency within this scope to become a major issue both for European Commission and for utilities. As a result, several EU R&D projects are currently underway, dealing with different pieces of such challenging problem. Standing out among them is the EU FP7 project ENERsip, whose main objective is to design, develop, and validate an adaptive service-oriented ICT platform to enable energy efficiency within energy-positive neighborhoods by remotely monitoring, controlling, and coordinating power generation and consumption in response to dynamic conditions. This paper focuses on the methodology, procedures, metrics, and tools to comprehensively evaluate the main benefits, in terms of energy and cost savings, as well as the communications infrastructure performance of such platform.

Sustainability in university campus: options for achieving nearly zero energy goals

Purpose The purpose of this study was to design a renovation plan for a university campus building (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering) with the aim to achieve nearly zero energy performance, ensuring a low specific demand (lower than 44 kWh/m2) and a high level of on-site renewable generation (equivalent to more than 20 per cent of the energy demand). Design/methodology/approach The baseline demand was characterized based on energy audits, on smart metering data and on the existing building management system data, showing a recent reduction of the electricity demand owing to some implemented measures. The renovation plan was then designed with two main measures, the total replacement of the actual lighting by LEDs and the installation of a photovoltaic system (PV) with 78.8 kWp coupled with an energy storage system with 100 kWh of lithium-ion batteries. Findings The designed renovation achieved energy savings of 20 per cent, with 27.5 per cent of the consumed energy supplied by the PV system. This will ensure a reduction of the specific energy of the building to only 30 kWh/m2, with 42.4 per cent savings on the net-energy demand. Practical implications The designed renovation proves that it is possible to achieve nearly zero energy goals with cost-effective solutions, presenting the lighting renovation and the solar PV generation system a payback of 2.3 and 6.9 years, respectively. Originality/value This study innovated by defining ambitious goals to achieve nearly zero energy levels and presenting a design based on a comprehensive lighting retrofit and PV generation, whereas other studies are mostly based on envelope refurbishment and behaviour changes.

Smart Grid: ICT Control for Distributed Energy Resources

The fact that the electrical grid represents a critical and complex infrastructure has prevented it from experiencing major breakthroughs during decades. Therefore, some problems and inefficiencies have been carried around for a long while, up to the point that traditional electrical grid is far away from being prepared to face incoming challenges, such as properly integrating the foreseen high penetration of Distributed Energy Resources (DER), mainly intermittent and stochastic renewable generation, electric vehicles and energy storage, or proactively controlling the energy demand bymeans of the so-called Demand Response (DR) programs. As a result, the electrical grid is currently undergoing slowly but surely its inexorablemetamorphosis under the new paradigm of the so-called Smart Grid. This metamorphosis basically entails evolving from a highly centralized and static system, where few energy generators supply electricity to a huge number of consumption points without exchanging information in real time, into a highly distributed and dynamic system, with many low capacity, geographically distributed generators, which are able to communicate with the consumption points in order to coordinate and optimize their operation. Ensuring the balance and stability of the electrical grid under this new paradigm requires the deployment of a vast number of sensors and actuators which will generate an unprecedented huge amount of data. Thus, highperformance, reliable, secure, and scalable communications networks and Information Technologies (IT) systems play a central role in the Smart Grid, which is driving the next wave of research and innovation in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector. The aim of this special issue was to gather high-quality cutting-edge research papers addressing the use of distributed sensor and actuator networks in SmartGrids, including topics such as novel ICT architectures, wireless and wired communications technologies, interoperability and conformance testing, big data and analytics, and cloud computing, and applications such as Advanced Metering Infrastructures (AMIS), Demand Response (DR), Wide Area Monitoring Systems (WAMS), or transportation electrification. The special issue has attracted the submission of 17 papers. After a thorough peer-review process, seven papers have been accepted for publication. The topics covered in these papers range from Advanced Metering Infrastructures and Demand Response to substation automation and smart lighting, including wireless and powerline communications networks and cybersecurity.

Analysis of the distributed residential energy storage impact on the grid operation

The mismatch between the house demand and the Photovoltaic (PV) generation profiles brings the need to export to the grid a significant part of the locally generated energy, even though the same amount of energy is later imported back for local consumption. Meanwhile, the utilization of energy storage is many times discussed as being or not the best option, since in some periods the injection into the grid can bring benefits. In this work, an assessment of the grid energy balancing impact achieved with or without energy storage is conducted. A storage management strategy is proposed that coordinates the surplus PV generation with the surplus demand on a daily time frame, and reduces the maximum peaks of both. This assessment is done for different levels of residential PV penetration in Southern Europe and comparing the proposed storage management with other specific storage roles.