European NILM workshop 2015 in London

I'm really happy to here that there will be a Second European Workshop on Non-intrusive Load Monitoring this summer.
The event was announced from Oliver Parson, an organizer of the Workshop, as follows:

I'm really excited to announce that the Second European Workshop on Non-intrusive Load Monitoring will be held on 8th July 2015 at Imperial College London. The workshop is the follow up to last year's NILM @ London workshop, which provided the first European venue which brought together both academics and companies with an interest in energy disaggregation. Updates and registration information can be found at the new website: www.nilm.eu

Some important information:

When: 8th July 2015
Where: Imperial College London, UK
Cost: Free
Objective: To provide a European venue for disaggregation researchers to discuss recent developments in the field and fuel future collaborations

This workshop will have a more technical focus than the first workshop, and will feature a keynote from Mario Bergés in the morning and a technical session of invited talks in the afternoon. Furthermore, we're inviting all attendees to bring a poster on a topic of their choice, which could be a recent piece of work, their company's current direction, or even an invitation for collaboration on a joint project. Last, we're hoping to live stream the event online for anyone who can't be there in person, though this is a little experimental!

For more information please visit www.nilm.eu!

Call for Papers Conference on Innovative Smart Grids Technologies Latin American

October 5-6-7, 2015

Hotel Radisson Montevideo, Uruguay

isgtla.org

chairs@isgtla.org

Radisson Montevideo (CC-BY-3.0 Rodrigo uy)

The IEEE PES Conference on Innovative SMART GRID Technologies (ISGT-LA 2015) Latin American, sponsored by the IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) and hosted by IEEE URUGUAY SECTION and PES local CHAPTER, will be held on OCT 5, 6 and 7th, 2015.

The Conference will be a forum for the participants to discuss state-of-the-art innovations in Smart Grid technologies, to attend tutorials and Industry Panels.

Conference TOPICS are:

- Renewable Energy Sources and Smart Grid (Hydro, Tidal, Wind, Solar and Electric Vehicles, Storage technologies), Wind Integration, Resources forecast (water, wind, weather), Environmental Impacts and Climate change mitigation,

- Energy and Distribution Management Systems, Wide Area Monitoring, Control and Operation (SCADA Systems), Call Center solutions for Smart Grid

- Computational methods and optimization techniques in Smart Grids; Big Data, Massive Grid Data, Data Mining of Smart Grid, Geographic information system (GIS) technology and Smart Grid, Multi-agent Based Applications for Smart Grids

- Smart Grid Impact on Electric Power Systems (Generation, Transmission and Distribution), Grid modeling, analysis and simulation, real time and co-simulation, Stability

- Demand Response, Demand side management, Customer aspects, user behavior and Flexible Demand,

- Smart Grids Information and Communications Technologies (I.C.T): Communications, System Architecture, Operations Support System (OSS), WANs and LANs Networks, 3G/4G networking. Control and Information Systems: Cyber Security Systems, Intelligent Monitoring and Outage Management

- Power System Instrumentation and Measurements, Metering Infrastructure and Instrumentation, Smart Meters, Components Reliability and Diagnostics, System and Components Asset Management

- Power Quality, Energy Efficiency and Smart Grid, Power Electronics Devices: modeling, application, control. FACTS: flexible alternating current transmission system power electronics and Smart Grid

- Protection in Energy Systems, PMUs and Wide Area Monitoring, IEC 61850, distributed IEDs, Synchrophasors in Distribution

- Smart Grids Interoperability, Regulation and Policies, Codes, Standards, Public Policies for implementation of Smart Grids, Testing and certification

-Integration of Distributed Energy Resources, Distributed Generation Islanded Systems and Microgrids: operation, control, monitoring and technologies, Low-voltage direct current (LVDC) distribution networks

- Home and Building Automation, Smart Cities, Cross Energy-domain solutions, Smart Sensors, Convergence of Smart Grid and the Internet of Things,

- Smart Grid Projects, Field Tests, large-scale demonstrations and deployment experiences, Future trends: technologies, researches, standards, incentives, opportunities

- Smart Grid Agenda; Smart Grid Roadmaps, Smart Grid Infrastructure Investments, Planning and Budgets, Cost and Benefits Analysis, Grant Programs,

- Smart Grids and Electricity Markets, Economics and incentive Regulations for Smart Grids, Impact of Smart Grids in Regulation and Energy Pricing, Smart Grids and Sustainable Developement,

- Smart Grid Utility Assets; Smart Grid Assets Management, urban enviroment, self-healing techniques, underground grids, Smart Wires, GIS for Smar Grid,Substation Equipment and Smart Grids; Transformers, Circuit Breakers, Switches

ISGT-LA Sample Papers;

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5mRMHjp1zrIa0NiTlVmZDJva0k/view?usp=sharing

Important Dates:

March 15, 2015 EXTENDED ABSTRACT Submission Deadline
June 15, 2015 Notification of paper ACCEPTANCE
August 15, 2015 Camera-ready / FINAL PAPER Submission Deadline
October 5-6-7, 2015 Conference at Radisson Montevideo Hotel

Evolving a Self-organizing Energy Market for Microgrids

Graphical user interface of the FREVO plugin

Andrea Monacchi and Wilfried Elmenreich went to Zurich to present their paper about a home energy market simulator at Energieinformatik '2014.
In the presented work, self-organizing behavior between prosumers is implemented at device level via market-based energy allocation solutions. The approach is implemented in a simulator extension to the open framework FREVO, which is released for open use. With the help of FREVO, artificial neural network controllers for energy prosumers are designed using an evolutionary algorithm. Minimizing individual and overall running costs enables a better use of local energy production from renewable sources, while considering residents' necessities to minimize discomfort.

• Andrea Monacchi, Sergii Zhevzhyk, Wilfried Elmenreich. HEMS: A Home Energy Market Simulator. Energieinformatik. Zurich, November 2014.

HEMS: A Home Energy Market Simulator from Andrea Monacchi

Call for Papers of the Fourth IFIP Conference on Sustainable Internet and ICT for Sustainability

CALL FOR PAPERS

SustainIT 2015

Fourth IFIP Conference on Sustainable Internet and ICT for Sustainability

 2015, Madrid, Spain

http://www.networks.imdea.org/sustainit2015/index.html

All papers presented at SustainIT 2015 will be published in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. The best paper presented at the conference will receive a Best Paper Award.

Authors of papers of particular merit will be invited to submit an extended version of their work to the Elsevier Journal of Computer Communications Journal (COMCOM).

SCOPE AND OVERVIEW

The evolving information and communications (ICT) technologies present a unique opportunity to effect the transformation needed to move us towards the goal of sustainability by helping to reduce our carbon footprint, mitigate and adapt ill effects of climate change, reduce and repair environmental damage, provide effective disaster response and recovery, creatively manage overstressed infrastructures in crowded urban systems, and enhance use of planet friendly materials and technologies. ICT is already being integrated into many areas of our lives, such as smart management of city services, transportation, energy distribution and management, health care, etc., and this integration is expected to expand deeper and wider in the coming years and decades. Unfortunately, this ICT proliferation brings in its own challenges of increased carbon footprint, accelerating obsolescence of electronic equipment and its disposal issues, increased use of precious natural resources such as water and materials, etc. These twin problems of reducing the environmental impact of ICT and exploiting ICT for a more sustainable world form the underlying theme for SustainIT since its inception in 2010.

This year's SustainIT continues this theme by focusing on inter-disciplinary scientific challenges of enhancing the sustainability of ICT and via ICT. The goal of this conference is to bring together people from different research areas, and provide a forum to exchange ideas, discuss solutions, and share experiences among researchers, professionals, and application developers from both industry and academia.

Original papers addressing both theoretical and practical aspects of sustainability of ICT (including smart energy management) and innovative use of ICT to enhance human and societal sustainability are solicited.

TOPICS OF INTEREST include but are not limited to:

1) Sustainable communication substrates:
Energy-efficient networking technologies and architectures
Energy-efficient wired and wireless communications protocols
Cross-layer optimizations for sustainable networking
Novel standards and metrics for green communications

2) Energy-efficient operation of computing infrastructure:
Energy-efficient management of computing, storage, and network resources
Managing carbon footprint of data centers and increasing its energy efficiency
Algorithms to reduce the energy consumption of ICT infrastructure
Trade-offs between energy efficiency, Quality of Service, and reliability
Adaptation of computing and communications infrastructure to variable renewable energy supply
Emerging computing/storage technologies for energy efficient operation

3) Achieving sustainability through the application of ICT:
Application of ICT to increase the energy efficiency of smart homes, smart buildings, and smart cities
ICT for sustainable mobility, transport, and logistics
ICT for energy-efficient industrial environments and processes
ICT for smart power grids and novel data processing in smart energy systems
ICT for water distribution systems including leaks, theft, contamination, and attacks.
ICT for agriculture, food distribution/logistics, waste reduction, tracking/provenance, etc.
ICT for healthcare (health monitoring & healthy lifestyle support systems, disease detection/monitoring, assistive technologies, health care information systems, etc.)
ICT for underwater (e.g., oceanic) monitoring and communications
ICT for waste water and waste monitoring, handling and reduction
ICT in disaster monitoring, rescue and recovery, including emergency networking and exploitation of social media
ICT for monitoring and conservation of biodiversity
ICT for geohazard monitoring (e.g., landslides, earthquakes, etc.)
Crowdsourcing solutions for sustainability
Urban Sustainability

4) Practical issues in sustainable communication systems
Security and privacy in ICT applications for sustainability
Energy consumption measurements, models, and monitoring tools
Measurement and evaluation of the Internet's sustainability
Test-bed and prototype implementations of sustainable ICT systems

5) Science of Sustainability
Metrics for sustainability and their evaluation
Modeling of human behavior regarding sustainability choices (e.g., reduction in energy consumption, engagement of power management features, etc.)
Ecosystem modeling (perturbations and equilibria)

PAPER SUBMISSION

All submissions must describe original research, not published or currently under review for another workshop, conference, or journal. Manuscripts must be limited to 8 pages and must strictly adhere to the IEEE conference publication format (e.g., 10pt font, single spacing, double column) in US Letter size with all fonts embedded. Detailed instructions for manuscript preparation and submission are available on theconference website.

Papers must be submitted electronically in PDF format through EDAS.

Submission implies the willingness of at least one author to register and attend the conference to present the paper. The organizers reserve the right to exclude a paper from distribution after the conference if the paper is not presented at the conference.

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.

Quick intro to the Open Source Renewables Alternative Power System Simulation (RAPSim)

In a previous blogpost, we introduced RAPSim, a free open source power system simulator with a graphical interface. RAPSim was developed at the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt within the Lakeside Labs project Smart Microgrid. The main architect of RAPSim, Manfred Rabl-Pöchacker now produced video giving an ultra-fast introduction to the tool. Got three minutes? Here is the video:



Interested? RAPSim can be freely downloaded at rapsim.sourceforge.net.
If you want to learn more about RAPSim, here is a paper about RAPSim:

M. Pöchacker, T. Khatib, and W. Elmenreich. The microgrid simulation tool RAPSim: Description and case study. In Proceedings of the IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Asia (ISGT-ASIA'14), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2014. IEEE.

How the Smart Grid will Improve our Live

WhatIsSmartGrid.org blesses us with a happy video about the Smart Grid: "3 Ways the Smart Grid Improves How We Live". Although the video is a bit uncritical on the challenges and implementation costs, the video is interesting and summarizes expected advantages for the customer in a nutshell: By the way, the three things addressed in the video are reliability, cost-savings, and flexibility.