Energy Informatics in Klagenfurt at a Glance

In the present day, the electric power grid faces an evolutionary step towards the smart grid. The smart grid is defined as the enhancement of the electric power grid with information and communication technology. This sort of digitisation will enable a bidirectional flow of energy and information within the power grid and provide several novel applications and allow to unlock the full potential of renewable energy technologies. To cope with the challenge of digitisation in power grids, key elements of future energy systems have to be explored and furthermore, computational methods have to be developed and refined.

The Smart Grids group, located at the University of Klagenfurt, contributes to this challenge by investigating how power meter readings can be analysed to discover solutions to sustainably increase the energy efficiency of energy systems. 

"We carried out a measurement campaign in eight selected households to track power consumption of individual electrical appliances for over one year. The main outcome was the GREEND dataset, which was analysed to gain further insights into energy consumption behaviour", says Andrea Monacchi, the coordinator of the campaign. 

Figure: Overview of the households and appliances

On basis of such data, policies can be formulated to improve energy efficiency by shedding of standby losses, postponement to off-peak periods, replacement of inefficient appliances, and operation curtailment. The networked power meter (smart meter) represents the key element in the transition towards the smart grid since such measurement equipment provides feedback to the users, other appliances, and the electric utility. 

"The smart meter is a vital tool for researchers to record the energy consumption of households and industrial buildings. On basis of the collected data, computational methods and effectivity of efficiency measures are evaluated", states Christoph Klemenjak. "We developed an open-hardware smart metering board called YoMo, which is an extension unit for the Arduino platform. The YoMo is designed to monitor current flow and voltage level, as well as active, reactive, and apparent power at the feed point of households."

Figure: The YoMo smart metering board

In general, smart meters serve several purposes such as billing of consumed energy, providing immediate feedback to the users, or switching loads. Smart metering and fine-grained energy data are one of the major enablers for the future smart grid and an improved energy efficiency in smart homes. On the one hand these fine-grained measurements will lead to improved energy consumption habits, on the other hand the fine-grained data produces many questions with respect to privacy issues. To ensure both, household privacy and smart meter information, load hiding techniques were introduced to obfuscate the load demand visible at the household energy meter. 

"The load hiding technique we developed works with devices that are already in the system. By controlling these household appliances in a certain way, your power profile becomes scrambled", Professor Elmenreich explains. 

Selected Publications 

C. Klemenjak, D. Egarter, and W. Elmenreich. YOMO-The Arduino based smart metering board. Computer Science - Research and Development (Springer), 2016. 

M. Pöchacker, D. Egarter, and W. Elmenreich. Proficiency of power values for load disaggregation. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, 2016. 

D. Egarter, V. P. Bhuvana, and W. Elmenreich. PALDi: Online Load Disaggregation based on Particle Filtering. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentations and Measurement, 2015. 

D. Egarter, C. Prokop, and W. Elmenreich. Load Hiding of Household's Power Demand. IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Communications, 2014. 

A. Monacchi, D. Egarter, W. Elmenreich, S. D'Alessandro, and A. M. Tonello. GREEND: An energy consumption dataset of households in Italy and Austria. In Proc. IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Communications, 2014. 

The Energy Informatics Lab

Data will be one of the most important resources in the future. Among other timely research questions, activities in energy informatics explore how data provided by advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) can be utilised in the most adequate and efficient way. In order to record energy data, the Energy Informatics Lab provides a wide range of measurement instruments such as smart meters, oscilloscopes, and self-designed power meters. Furthermore, modern computer infrastructure allows to evaluate novel computational methods for prediction and user feedback for future energy systems.

Figure: A small selection of the present measurement equipment

The Energy Informatics lab also integrates a well-equipped soldering work station and a 3D printer, which allows the researchers to craft prototypes and custom enclosures for all kinds of measurement equipment. “Previously our students often had problems apply the theoretic concepts they learned. The Energy Informatics Lab offers the possibility to try out things in practice, which gives them a different perspective,” states Professor Wilfried Elmenreich.

Figure: The present 3D printer allows rapid prototyping

More detailed information can be found in our research blogs Energy Informatics, The Smart Grid, and on the institute's web page Networked and Embedded Systems.

Impressions from IEEE Conference on Smart Grid Communication 2014

The IEEE Conference on Smart Grid Communication 2014 was held from November the 13th to 14th in Venice. Wilfried Elmenreich, Dominik Egarter and Andrea Monacchi from our group participated at this event.

The conference was organized in 5 different symposia:

• Communications and Networks to enable the Smart Grid
• Cyber Security and Privacy
• Architectures, Control and Operation for Smart Grid, Microgrids and Distributed Resources
• Demand Response and Dynamic Pricing
• Data Management and Grid Analytics

Dominik presented his paper Load Hiding of Household's Power Demand, (Dominik Egarter, Christoph Prokop, Wilfried Elmenreich) in the session on "Cyber Security and Privacy".

Andrea gave a talk about his paper GREEND: An Energy Consumption Dataset of Households in Italy and Austria (Andrea Monacchi, Dominik Egarter, Wilfried Elmenreich, Salvatore D’Alessandro, Andrea M. Tonello) in the "Data Management and Grid Analytics" session.

YoMo - The Open-Source Smart Meter Platform

YoMo board with electronic components

We introduce our recently developed smart metering board called YoMo (You only meter once). The board is an extension board compatible to Arduino boards. YoMo offers features such as:

• measuring active, reactive, apparent power, current, and voltage
• switching loads up to 20A,
• adjustable sampling frequency and 
• open-hardware design and open-source firmware

YoMo PCB before soldering

The smart meter platform, provided as open hardware, is designed with a connector interface compatible to the Arduino platform, thus opening the possibilities for smart meters with flexible hardware and computation features, starting from low-cost 8 bit micro controllers up to powerful single board computers that can run Linux. The metering platform features a current transformer which allows a non-intrusive installation of the current measurement unit. The suggested design can switch loads, offers a variable sampling frequency, and provides measurement data such as active power, reactive and apparent power. Results indicate that measurement accuracy and resolution of the proposed metering platform are sufficient for a range of different applications and loads from a few watts up to five kilowatts.

YoMo is further described in this paper

C. Klemenjak, D. Egarter and W. Elmenreich. YOMO - The Arduino based Smart Metering Board. Energieinformatik'14, Zurich, Switzerland, 2014

Further information can be found at the YoMo project homepage: http://yomo.sourceforge.net/

GREEND: An Energy Consumption Dataset of Households in Italy and Austria

Some days ago, we got notice that our paper "GREEND: An Energy Consumption Dataset of Households in Italy and Austria" is accepted at the IEEE SmartGridComm 2014. The SmartGridComm 2014 will take place in Venice, a fascinating and marvelous Italian city, on November 3-6, 2014.

GREEND: An Energy Consumption Dataset of Households in Italy and Austria, 
Andrea Monacchi, Dominik Egarter, Wilfried Elmenreich, Salvatore D’Alessandro, Andrea M. Tonello

Home energy management systems can be used to monitor and optimize consumption and local production from renewable energy. To assess solutions before their deployment, researchers and designers of those systems demand for energy consumption datasets. In this paper, we present the GREEND dataset, containing detailed power usage information obtained through a measurement campaign in households in Austria and Italy. We provide a description of consumption scenarios and discuss design choices for the sensing infrastructure. Finally, we bench- mark the dataset with state-of-the-art techniques in load disaggregation, occupancy detection and appliance usage mining.

An authors' version is available in arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.3100

The GREEND dataset is publicly availble, donwload the newest version at https://sourceforge.net/projects/greend/files/GREEND_0-2_300615.zip

Load Hiding of Household's Power Demand

Our publication "Load Hiding of Household's Power Demand" is accepted at the IEEE SmartGridComm 2014. The SmartGridComm 2014 will take place in Venice, a fascinating and marvelous Italian city, on November 3-6, 2014.

Load Hiding of Household's Power Demand, Dominik Egarter, Christoph Prokop, Wilfried Elmenreich

With the development and introduction of smart metering, the energy information for costumers will change from infrequent manual meter readings to fine-grained energy consumption data. On the one hand these fine-grained measurements will lead to an improvement in costumers’ energy habits, but on the other hand the fined-grained data produces in- formation about a household and also households’ inhabitants, which are the basis for many future privacy issues. To ensure household privacy and smart meter information owned by the household inhabitants, load hiding techniques were introduced to obfuscate the load demand visible at the household energy meter. In this work, a state-of-the-art battery- based load hiding (BLH) technique, which uses a controllable battery to disguise the power consumption and a novel load hiding technique called load-based load hiding (LLH) are presented. An LLH system uses an controllable household appliance to obfuscate the household’s power demand. We evaluate and compare both load hiding techniques on real household data and show that both techniques can strengthen household privacy but only LLH can increase appliance level privacy.

An authors' version is available in arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.2534

 

Call for Papers 1st Workshop on Middleware for a Smarter Use of Electric Energy

CALL FOR PAPERS

MidSEE 2015

1st Workshop on Middleware for a Smarter Use of Electric Energy

in conjunction with NetSys 2015, Cottbus, Germany

https://www.netsys2015.com/workshops-tutorials/midsee/

MOTIVATION & WORKSHOP SCOPE

Smart energy meters are increasingly installed in newly constructed buildings worldwide, as regulated by, e.g., the European Union's Energy Services Directive. Their combination with the vision of an Internet of Things, in which billions of embedded devices will continually monitor the environment, enables the fine-grained monitoring of household and office energy usage and hence a large range of novel services. While many such functions have been devised so far (e.g., advice how to save energy or the disaggregation of electricity bills), these solutions commonly rely on the availability of hard- and software systems by a single manufacturer. Interoperability, including the potential to integrate new energy metering devices, is mostly unsupported due to the wide variety of (non-compatible) standards and communication protocols.

This workshop provides a platform to present current research activities in communications and processing of energy consumption data, with its primary focus on electric energy usage. The scope of the workshop includes contributions that address the integration of energy metering equipment from different manufacturers into a single middleware system which operates on a building level, as well as novel means to collect, process and visualize these data. Accepted papers will not only present novel research results in these domains, but also comprise an evaluation in which their merits are assessed.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Novel energy metering hardware designs and experiences
• Data collection and command distribution protocols for energy  management systems
• Middleware systems for energy data, including novel local data processing algorithms
• Control of alternative energy sources to increase their production efficiency
• Innovative tools to model and visualize energy expenditure and production
• Sensing and actuation of electrical loads
• Privacy and security in energy management middleware systems
• User interfaces for energy display, management and control

PAPER SUBMISSION

Authors are invited to submit papers of up to 6 pages in IEEE two-column format. Submissions must be original and should not have been published previously or be under consideration for publication while being evaluated for this workshop. Accepted papers will be published in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. More details about the ubmission process can be found on the website.


IMPORTANT DATES

Submission:   Sep. 26th, 2014
Notification: Nov. 17th, 2014
Camera Ready: Dec. 10th, 2014
Workshop:     Mar. 12th, 2015


WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS

Andreas Reinhardt, The University of New South Wales, Australia
Christian Renner, Universität zu Lübeck, Germany
Delphine Christin, University of Bonn & Fraunhofer FKIE, Germany


PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Matteo Ceriotti, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Alexander De Luca, LMU München, Germany
Paul Dunphy, Newcastle University, UK
Wilfried Elmenreich, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria
Stefan Fischer, Universität zu Lübeck, Germany
Hannes Frey, University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
Stefan Katzenbeisser, TU Darmstadt, Germany
Marco Ortolani, University of Palermo, Italy
Oliver Parson, University of Southampton, UK
Daniele Puccinelli, SUPSI, Switzerland
Christian Steger, TU Graz, Austria
Volker Turau, TU Hamburg-Harburg, Germany
Sebastian Zöller, TU Darmstadt, Germany

Impressions from BuildSys 2013

The 5th ACM Workshop On Embedded Systems For Energy-Efficient Buildings (BuildSys) 2013 were hold from the 13th to 14th of November in Rome, where the two researcher Dominik Egarter and Andrea Monacchi participated in. According to the general BuildSys chair the Workshops' aims can be summarized as follows:

The entrance of La Sapienza University, Rome, where SenSys and BuildSys were held

"BuildSys is a venue for discussing new directions in the monitoring, control, and management of energy consumption in buildings, and the generation of awareness and sustainability for an efficient energy market. BuildSys brings together researchers from a multitude of disciplines with a common goal to develop energy saving strategies that can have a major impact worldwide. BuildSys 2013 follows four successful predecessors held in Berkeley, Zurich, Seattle, and Toronto."

This year the workshop had 7 different season such as:

• Energy Efficiency in Homes,
• Data Analysis,
• Occupancy Detection, Monitoring & Use,
• Sensing for Energy,
• Energy and Water,
• HVAC, Modeling and Control and
• Thermal Comfort Management,

Andrea and Dominik at their posters 

where in total 22 papers were presented. In addition to the general paper presentation, the workshop offers a poster and demo session, where 10 posters and 8 demos were presented. The Smart Grid Group not only visited workshop, Dominik and Andrea were presenting two posters. Dominik showed his current result of Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) techniques with the title Appliance State Estimation Based on Particle Filtering. In this paper he showed how it is possible to apply Particle Filtering to the problem of aggregated power loads and how beneficial this approach can be. Moreover, Andreas poster has the title Insert Coin: turning the household into a prepaid billing system and propose an approach for raising energy awareness by combining appliance-level consumption information with prepaid billing so as to turn appliances in pay-as-you-go devices.

D. Egarter, Venkata Pathuri Bhuvana, W. Elmenreich. Appliance State Estimation Based on Particle Filtering, 5th ACM Workshop on Embedded Systems For Energy-Efficient Buildings, Rome, Italy, 2013.

A. Monacchi, W. Elmenreich. Insert Coin: turning the household into a prepaid billing system,5th ACM Workshop on Embedded Systems For Energy-Efficient Buildings (BuildSys'13), Rome, Italy, 2013

Evolutionary Appliance Detection for Miscellaneous Household Appliances

The paper "EvoNILM - Evolutionary Appliance Detection for Miscellaneous Household Appliances" was accepted to the Workshop "Green and Efficient Energy Applications of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation" at Gecco 2013.

To improve the energy awareness of consumers, it is necessary to provide them with information about their energy demand, not just on the household level. Non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) gives the consumer the opportunity to disaggregate their consumed power on the appliance level. The consumer is provided with information about the energy demand of each individual appliances. In this paper we present an evolutionary optimization algorithm, applicable to NILM purposes. It can be used to detect appliances with a probabilistic power demand model. We show that the detection performance of the evolutionary algorithm can be improved if the single population approach of the evolutionary algorithm is replaced by a parallel population approach with individual exchange and by the introduction of application-oriented pre-processing and mutation methods. The proposed algorithm is tested with Matlab simulations and is evaluated according to the fitness reached and detection probability of the algorithm.

This paper is an improvement and follow up paper of the previous work "Evolving Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring".

• D. Egarter, W. Elmenreich. EvoNILM - Evolutionary Appliance Detection for Miscellaneous Household Appliances Workshop on Green and Efficient Energy Applications of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, Amsterdam, July 2013.

EvoENERGY - Evolutionary Algorithms in Energy Applications @EvoStar 2013, Vienna

EvoStar comprises several co-located conferences on the topic of evolutionary computing. The track of EvoENERGY contained five paper presentations of interesting ideas for the Smart Grid.

Ana Soares from the University of Coimbra presented her work on "Domestic Load Scheduling Using Genetic Algorithms" where a Genetic Algorithm is used to optimize for an objective function considering energy consumption, end user preferences, peak power, and presently available energy. Encoding of solutions was done as string of integers where the recombination was done by a bit mask over the integer string (so no typical crossover). The evolved results define scheduling of loads from household appliances in order to fulfill the above defined objectives.

Stephan Hutterer from FH Hagenberg approached the optimal power flow problem with an evolutionary algorithm. Optimal control policies are learned offline for a given power grid resulting in general abstract rules for optimal power flow.

"Prediction is difficult, especially of the future" (Nils Bohr) - the prediction of power load profiles can be improved with the approach presented by Frédéric Krüger from the Université de Strasbourg. They show how a genetic algorithm generated with the EAsy Specification of Evolutionary Algorithms (EASEA) language can be applied to solve a noisy blind source separation problem and create accurate power load profiles using real world data.

Another approach for forecasting electrical consumption was presented by Martina Friese and Oliver Flasch from FH Köln in his talk on "Comparing Ensemble-Based Forecasting Methods for Smart-Metering Data". They apply state-of-the-art time-series forecasting methods to electrical energy consumption data recorded by smart meters and show that genetic programming is an attractive alternative to custom-built approaches for electrical energy consumption forecasting.

Dominik Egarter from Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt presented the paper "Evolving Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring" [PDF]. Here, an evolutionary algorithm is used to determine a set of devices for a given load curve - in other words, your smart meter knows what devices you have on even if they are not smart. The work on evolving non-intrusive load monitoring shows the capabilities of the approach but also its limits. The latter basically tell you how much you have to masquerade your power profile so that it does not give away information about the devices that constituted it. See also this blog article on Dominik's work.

Open-Source Energy Monitoring Hardware

OpenEnergyMonitor hardware: raspberry pi, emonTX
 and emonGLCD

In our smart microgrid laboratory at the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt we need to be able to measure energy flows at different places in the network. Our criteria had been to be able to measure power, current, and voltage with adjustable measurement time intervals. The meters should be networked wirelessly with a visualisation possibility via an embedded device or a web page. In order to implement appropriate measurement strategies (for example measuring with a time-triggered architecture) the system should be fully programmable, in other words open-source. 

emonCMS web-app visualization tool

To meet this requirements we decided to use the OpenEnergyMonitor. It provides a metering board emonTx, which is based on Arduino and communicates to some base station. This can be either a own-built base station emonBase from OpenEnergyMonitor or the nowadays trendy Raspberry Pi. All necessary software is provided and easy to use. The OpenEnergyMonitor also provides an energy visualisation tool called emonCMS, which can be installed on the Raspberry Pi. It can be used for processing, logging and visualizing energy. Like the other software also the emonCMS is open source.

Links:

• Raspberry Pi, a credit-card-sized embedded computer running Linux
• OpenEnergyMonitor, open-source energy monitoring tools
• A. Monacchi, D. Egarter, W. Elmenreich. Integrating Households into the Smart Grid. Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Cyber-Physical Energy Systems, Berkeley, CA, May 2013.
• W. Elmenreich, G. Bauer, and H. Kopetz. The time-triggered paradigm. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Time-Triggered and Real-Time Communication Systems, 2003.

Evolving Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring

Our paper Evolving Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring by Dominik Egarter, Anita Sobe and Wilfried Elmenreich has been accepted for the conference track EvoEnergy (Evolutionary Algorithms in Energy Applications) of the EvoApplication (16th European Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary Computation) 2013, taking place in Vienna form 3rd to 5th of April.

Basic principle of the ON/OFF time genome appliance
detection. Given is the total power consumption over
time. The goal is to deduce the on/off times of devices
(colored blocks) that add up to the measured power profile.

Non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) identifies used appliances in a total power load according to their individual load characteristics. In this paper we propose an evolutionary optimization algorithm to identify appliances, which are modeled as on/off appliances. We evaluate our proposed evolutionary optimization by simulation with Matlab, where we use a random total load and randomly generated power profiles to make a statement of the applicability of the evolutionary algorithm as optimization technique for NILM. Our results shows that the evolutionary approach is feasible to be used in NILM systems and can reach satisfying detection probabilities.



Dominik Egarter, Anita Sobe, Wilfried Elmenreich,   Evolving Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring,   EvoApplication 2013,   16th European Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary Computation, April, 2013

Design Guidelines for Smart Appliances

From July 5-6 2012 the tenth Workshop on Intelligent Solutions in Embedded Systems (WISES) took place in Klagenfurt, Austria. On this workshop Wilfried Elmenreich and Dominik Egarter presented their paper called "Design Guidelines for Smart Appliances".

Possible software solution for smart appliances:
waistline architecture model

Embedded intelligence can help controlling and reducing the energy consumption of appliances to a significant amount. Such a smart appliance will consist of a communication interface, a local processing and decision unit and the appliance's actual function. Sophisticated functions for such a device will involve a notion of real-time with a respective time format, a generic database that contains energy usage logs, error messages, warnings and real-time measurements for power usage, and an embedded self-description that allows to integrate the device into a system with minimum manual configuration. While there exists concepts for smart plugs and smart outlets that can be applied to smarten an existing device, in general we need to assume that the variety of appliances and technologies will require the support for various architectures including software solutions that integrate into the functions of an appliance with existing computing power, e.g. a DVD player or a state-of-the-art television set. Thus there is a need for architectural services with flexibility for different hosting systems while keeping the interoperability with respect to a smart home control system.

Wilfried Elmenreich, Dominik Egarter, "Design Guidelines for Smart Appliances", Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Intelligent Solutions in Embedded Systems (WISES’12), pp. 76-82, July, 2012

CfP: IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Engineering (SGE’12)

27-29 August, 2012

University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT)

2000 Simcoe St. N.

Oshawa, ON, L1H 7K4

The Smart Grids are electricity networks that promise to enhance the operational efficiency of nationwide power supply via distributed generation with bi-directional electricity flow. This objective is achieved by allowing intelligent monitoring and control of different components within the distribution and transmission lines as well as other systems from utilities on one side to the end user on the other side, while maintain the power quality, security, reliability and safety with minimum environmental impacts. Governments around the world are investing heavily in this technology to ensure optimum energy use and supply, enable better planning for outage responses and recovery, and facilitate the integration of heterogeneous technologies around the grid, such as renewable energy systems, electrical vehicle networks, and smart homes. Smart Grids present enormous engineering challenges in the design and integration of electrical grid with communication and network technologies, along with substantial questions around required security and privacy of different components within the grid. The SGE’12 conference aims to provide an opportunity to discuss various engineering challenges of smart grid design and operation, by focusing on advanced methods and practices for designing different components and their integration within the grid, and to provide a forum for researchers from academia and professionals from industry, as well as government regulators, to tackle these challenges and to discuss and exchange knowledge and best practices about design and implementation of Smart Grid.

Topics of interest include (but not limited to) the following:

• Grid infrastructures design, planning, operation and management
  
• Power systems design and applications
  
• Sensors, communications and network
  
• Grid modeling, simulation, and data management
  
• Engineering design of grid applications
  
• Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) systems
  
• Grid protection, reliability, power quality and maintenance
  
• Smart metering, measurement, instrumentation, and control
  
• Customer information security and privacy
  
• Transmission & distribution lines
  
• Renewable energy and distributed generation within microgrids
  
• Computation and optimization
  
• Smart homes
  
• Standardization and interoperability
  
• Pricing, policies, and energy planning
  

Important Dates

Abstract Submission: 1-Nov-2011
First Notification: 15-Dec-2011
Full Paper Submission: 1-Feb-2012
Acceptance Notice: 1-Apr-2012
Camera-Ready Due: 1-May-2012
Conference dates: 27-29 August, 2012

Need motivation to save energy? - Go for social media competition!

There is a large potential by closely monitoring the energy consumption of your appliances in a comprehensive overview. Being aware of the largest energy consumers and the general energy demand over the day, one can optimize his/her household to reduce power consumption or to shift consumption to a daytime where the demand/supply situation is better.
However, what is the motivation to do so?
As it can be seen in other situations (like riding a bike vs. taking the car, etc.), saving a few bucks might not be enough motivation to effectively change the consumers' behavior.
Austin Montgomery, University of Waterloo gives a possible solution to this problem in his video "Making the Smart Grid Smarter with Social Media": make it a competition on social networks!



By the way, this is my favorite video from the IEEE SmartGridComm 2011 video contest. Check http://www.ieee-smartgridcomm.org/video.html for the other nominated clips.

The smart grid challenge

The transformation of our energy system from fossil fuel resources to sustainable resources is one of the great challenges of our time, but opens also a great chance for establishing a more efficient and robust distribution of energy to the benefit of all its users. A way to do this is the intelligent integration of the behavior of all users (generators and consumers) of an electricity grid to optimize the operation of the system, e.g., by balancing energy consumption based on availability and demand.

In order to achieve this goal, we need to define innovative products and services together with intelligent monitoring, control, communication, and self-healing technologies: Electrical devices, generators, and energy storages will be integrated with local intelligence and a network interface. These smart meters will form a network that dynamically adapts pricing and distribution based on demand, supply, and network load. The emerging network will be a self-organizing smart grid which efficiently maintains existing services, allows for prediction of future energy and network requirements.

However, the challenge is not a mere technical one. A main characteristic of the smart grid is that it will allow consumers and suppliers to play an active role in optimizing the system. While this is a very positive aspect, it leads to new challenges such as social aspects like fairness and acceptance, economic aspects such as market stability and resilience against speculation attacks, and legal issues such as warranty, data security and privacy. Last but not least, the smart grid forms a complex system of interacting agents, which will require new models similar to those from physics, biology or economics.

The goals of the smart grid are ambitious. But considering the importance of energy to our society, there is no other chance than to work on it in a global cooperative effort. There is no time to wait.