1st International Conference on Smart Grids and Green IT Systems

CALL FOR PAPERS

1st International Conference on Smart Grids and Green IT Systems

SMARTGREENS
http://www.smartgreens.org/
19 - 20 April, 2012
Porto, Portugal

In collaboration with EDP, SIEMENS, Schneider Electric and Efacec
Sponsored by INSTICC
INSTICC is Member of WfMC and OMG
Media Partner: SmartGrid Carrers.com

IMPORTANT DATES:
  Regular Paper Submission: January 23, 2012 (deadline extended)
  Authors Notification (regular papers): February 22, 2012
  Final Regular Paper Submission and Registration: March 6, 2012

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Submitted papers will be subject to a double-blind review process. All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings, under an ISBN reference, on paper and CD-ROM support. JSEF
The proceedings will be submitted for indexation by Thomson Reuters Conference Proceedings Citation Index (ISI), INSPEC, DBLP and EI (Elsevier Index).
Best paper awards will be distributed during the conference closing session. Please check the website for further information (http://www.smartgreens.org/BestPaperAward.aspx).
All papers presented at the conference venue will be available at the SciTePress Digital Library (http://www.scitepress.org/DigitalLibrary/). SciTePress is member of CrossRef (http://www.crossref.org/).

We would like to highlight the presence of the following keynote speakers: Charles Sheridan (Intel Labs Europe, Ireland) and Nikos Hatziargyriou (National Technical University, Greece). More names will be announced soon at the SMARTRGREENS 2012 conference website (http://www.smartgreens.org/KeynoteSpeakers.aspx).

Workshops, Special sessions, Tutorials as well as Demonstrations dedicated to other technical/scientific topics are also envisaged: companies interested in presenting their products/methodologies or researchers interested in holding a tutorial are invited to contact the conference secretariat. Workshop chairs and Special Session chairs will benefit from logistics support and other types of support, including secretariat and financial support, to facilitate the development of a valid idea.

Please check further details at the SMARTRGREENS 2012 conference web site. There you will find detailed information about the conference structure and its main topic areas. This conference is co-located with CSEDU 2012 (4th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - http://www.csedu.org/), CLOSER 2012 (2nd International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science - http://closer.scitevents.org/) and WEBIST 2012 (8th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - http://www.webist.org). Registration to SMARTGREENS will enable free attendance to any sessions of CSEDU, CLOSER and WEBIST 2012 as a non-speaker.

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CONFERENCE CHAIR:
Joaquim Filipe,  Polytechnic Institute of Setubal / INSTICC, Portugal

PROGRAM CO-CHAIR:
Brian Donnellan, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Ireland
Joao Peças Lopes, Universidade do Porto, Portugal
Joao Martins, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal


TOPIC AREAS:

AREA 1: SMART GRIDS

    - Architectures for Smart Grids
    - Smart Grids Modeling
    - Smart Grid Specific Protocols
    - Scalable Infrastructures for Smart Grids
    - Standards for Smart Grids
    - Load Balancing in Smart Grids
    - Smart Grid Security and Reliability
    - Smart Grids and Renewable Technologies
    - Sensors for Smart Grids
    - Real-Time Systems
    - Fault Tolerance and Disaster Recovery in Smart Grids
    - Integration of Smart Appliances
    - Smart Cities
    - Smart Homes (Domotics)


AREA 2: ENERGY-AWARE SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGIES

    - Optimization Techniques for Efficient Energy Consumption
    - Economic Models of Energy Efficiency
    - Greener Systems Planning and Design
    - Energy-Efficient Transmission Technologies
    - Energy Monitoring
    - Virtualization for Reducing Power Consumption
    - Scheduling and Switching Power Supplies
    - Performance Evaluation of Green Computing Systems
    - Energy Profiling and Measurement
    - Renewable Energy Resources
    - Embedded Sensor Networks
    - Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
    - Energy Management Systems (EMS)


AREA 3: SUSTAINABLE COMPUTING AND COMMUNICATIONS

    - Algorithms for Reduced Power, Energy and Heat
    - Qos and Green Computing
    - Green Software Engineering Methodologies and Tools
    - Virtualization Impact for Green Computing
    - Pervasive Computing for Energy Efficiency
    - Green Data Centers
    - Green Architectures for Grids, Clouds and Clusters
    - Green Computing Models, Methodologies and Paradigms
    - Green Communications Architectures and Frameworks
    - Sustainable Wireless Communication
    - Energy Efficient Network Hardware
    - Energy-Efficient Communication Protocols
    - Teleworking and Remote Collaboration
    - Education on Green Computing and Communications
    - Case Studies on Green Computing and Communications

Should we convert our electrical energy to methane?

At night between 11 PM and 4 AM there is an overcapacity of electrical energy. With the installation of wind energy, this overcapacity will even increase, since the is no merit in not using the wind to produce energy. In a smart grid, we will have time-of-use pricing for electrical energy and smart appliances being able to pick an economically good time to use energy. However, most appliances will still need to run during daytime or evening. Since electrical energy cannot be easily stored, we are in need for profound ideas to solve this issue.

Synthetic methane production

One possibilty could be the use of electrical energy to create methane, which can then be stored and used later for heating, cooking, or driving. In this process, first an electrolysis is performed to split water (HO2) into its components hydrogen(H) and oxygene(O). The hydrogen is then used to create methane or other gaseous fuels. Therefore, CO2 is added to produce methane (CH4). The produced methane is greenhouse-neutral since the amount of CO2 creation when being burned is exactly balanced by the amount of CO2 used in the production.
The biggest disadvantage of the approach is the limited efficiency of the method (about 50% of the energy is lost in the creation process, in total the efficiency is around 20-30%) and the comparably low price of natural methane sources. However, as soon as Russia is going to rise the gas prices, I'm gonna start my electrolyzer.

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

Home appliance energy usage

The Smart Grid will help to balance energy production and consumption.
While we are waiting for the Smart Grid to come, there is something we can do meanwhile - optimizing the energy usage of our local network of electrical appliances. Because one thing is for sure: energy does not come for free now and won't come for free in the future either.
When doing optimization, the important thing is to identify the parts of a system, where an optimization significantly affects the overall outcome. In the blog of the General Electric Company, you can find a nice interactive visualization of the power consumption for a selectable set of typical appliances.

A zero-Watt cloth dryer
(source:Wikimedia commons)

The website application tries to guess power consumption and cost of your set of appliances. While the values are just rough estimates, the numbers still give you a feeling for appliances which are expensive in terms of energy consuming and appliances which are more frugal.

I personally was quite surprised by the high power consumption of an electrical cloth dryer. Luckily, I have the zero-Watt edition at home :-)

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.

Siemens smart grid innovation contest winning ideas

In April 2011, Siemens called for an idea contest on Smart Grid Innovation. Now, the four best ideas out of 464 submitted contributions have been announced in an award ceremony in Berlin on September 15th. The winning ideas in short:
Christian Huder from EIT ICT Labs, (Germany) won one of the four prices with his idea
"Smart Grids - comparison or regulatory approaches and their implications on business models" discussing the roles of state, market, and providers.
Slobodan Matic from University of California, Berkeley, (USA) elaborated successfully on the concept of an "Integrated Modular Architecture for Distribution Automation".
If you want acceptance, you need games. Vasilis Nikolopoulos from Intelen, (Greece) explored this topic under the idea of "Advanced Demand Response Behavioral Gamification". Consumers having used to social media and gaming will be happy to play a game of consumption optimization in the future grid.
Multi-agent systems are a promising model for smart grids. Logenthiran Thillainathan from the National University of Singapore introduces the concept as an architectural paradigm for autonomously operating smart grids.

Congratulations to the winners and looking forward to see the ideas soon in action!


Source: Siemens Smart Grid Innovation Contest - Meet the Winners

Google and Microsoft back away from online power metering

Google PowerMeter and Microsoft Hohm are online web applications that enable consumers to analyze their energy usage and provide energy saving recommendations. The basic idea is to have an  application in the cloud that is using predictions, smart meters, and energy monitoring devices in order to provide you with information and recommendations about your home's power usage.

While Google's application came for free, Microsoft's tool was planned as a product to create revenue. Now, both projects are discontinued. PowerMeter was retired by Google in September 2011, joining the club of Google Wave and Google Health. In Google's official blog, the reason is only briefly stated as "efforts have not scaled as quickly as we would like", which leaves room to some interpretation. Microsoft's Hohm will be discontinued on May 31, 2012 due to a lack of consumer uptake.

This is sad, since a comprehensive user interface with web integration is a major asset in comparison to existing powermeters with their limited LCD displays and gray buttons. Remember, we are talking about an appliance that is basically planned to enter every household, not just being a tool for geeks. We certainly need a convenient user interface here.
With the bailout out of Google and Microsoft, two important drivers of innovation will be missing, on the other hand this might open the market for new developments. Apple, having filed a patent on a smart-home energy management dashboard system seems to be planning something, but it's still unclear what we will get.

Video on Google's PowerMeter when they were still enthusiastic