Public Sector

Explore the Mind Map to learn about the sustainable use of ICT in the Public Sector!

The possibility of achieving energy and emissions savings in economic sectors is comprehensible, since vast amounts of energy is used in production processes, for tempering and powering buildings and the transport of passengers and goods. Energy intense economic processes always inhere a certain potential for efficiency improvements and reductions in resource use. Although the public sector does not produce goods, it provides services to citizens and has to fulfill a significant role in the progress towards a low carbon society in general. Governments have been - and still are - establishing initiatives to improve the efficiency of public services and administrative activities. Most of them are based on information technology and dematerialize processes in public or health services for example. Beside directly improving the energy efficiency of governmental institutions and services, governments have certain responsibilities to control economic and social activities concerning the sustainable use of resources. It is highly questionable, if the global goal of addressing Climate Change by stabilizing emissions could be reached without political and governmental guidelines. Therefore environmental policies have to be established, which include the definition of objectives, the provision of sufficient incentives and the monitoring of the achievement of objectives.

Environmental Policy

The public sector provides some approaches to contribute to sustainability by making use of ICT. But the role of public institutions in establishing a low carbon economy has to be seen as more comprehensive. The governmental agencies have to fulfill the institutional dimension of the concept of sustainable development. They have to plan, monitor, control and asses sustainable development in order to meet the social, environmental and economic aims of this process. This involves the definition of a strategy and goals, the use of systems and facilities for monitoring, platforms and channels for the distribution of information, as well as capabilities to take action to correct course. The Climate Group sees the responsibility of policy makers in sending “clear signals that overall emissions reduction will be required” and setting up “appropriate policy frameworks” [1]. ICT can provide supportive systems for most of these responsibilities and the enforcement of an environmental policy:

• Decision support systems for creating strategies and taking actions on the basis of profound data. 
• Monitoring systems to assess compliance with regulations and constraints in the economic sectors. Especially the compliance to greenhouse gas emission policies have to be monitored. Also the achievement of sustainability objectives can be monitored by ICT systems using business ratios and benchmarks. 
• Information platforms, accessible via the Internet or other communication technologies, can serve to increase the common awareness of sustainability issues. This could help gaining acceptance of strategies and policies and inspire individual participation. 

The need for ICT as enabling technology partly results from the fact, that dealing with environmental issues involves the observation of complex systems. To reach the environmental, social, political and economic goals conforming to sustainable development decision support systems are needed, due to the overwhelming complexity of this context. Such systems enable the storage and management of data records and ratios, analyzing real time data and trends of environmental processes, forecasting and other supportive functions. A possible approach to serve such decision making support are information systems based on a multi-agent architecture [2]. The multi-agent paradigm allows to model complex systems in order to “understand the real nature of the processes, their influence and interconnections, and the possible outcomes in order to make preventive actions and to make correct decisions” [2].

The environmental policies assigned by governments have to contain incentives for several stakeholders involved in the process of establishing sustainable development. In the building sector there have to be increased regulations on building standards, promoting energy efficient building materials and systems. Subsidies by the public sector could give incentives to the business and private sector to increasingly integrate energy efficient technology. An example are low interest loans for renovations of buildings regarding energy performance [3]. This could help to address the current waste of energy by inefficient building design [4]. As a concrete example microgeneration heat technologies can be mentioned, which are still a market niche and not commonly adopted. Subsidies and price reductions combined with advanced information on the possibilities and suitabilities of these technologies, highlighting advantages and benefits could force to speed up adoption process. The uncertainty about performance and payback periods among potential users can still be considered as one of the main reason for non-adoption [5]. Additionally there is the widespread opinion that energy efficient buildings generally implicate higher capital costs, which leads to the reliance on established building designs in many cases, without even considering to make use of more energy efficient technology [3]. This underpins the importance of information and education on the topic of energy efficiency and the possibilities of sustainable development.

An important governmental incentive in the transport sector is the “encouragement of greater investment in public transport infrastructure [4]. There have to be economical benefits by the use of public transportation, to reduce dependence on fuel-based transportation methods. The governmental actions could also include the assignment of additional taxes on fuel and emissions from the transport sector, as well as increased taxes on road usage and vehicles with high fuel demand. As air pollution is a major topic in transport too, policies on tightened pollutant standards have to be assigned [3]. In the industrial sector the most common incentives on emissions reductions are negotiated voluntary agreements and tax reductions for investments in energy efficient technology [3]. In relation to the enabling potential of ICT, governments should establish information initiatives to propagate the benefits of energy efficient technologies and their potential application areas.

The development of energy efficient technologies like ICT, which have the potential to reduce carbon emissions by energy savings, strongly depends on investments in research and development (R&D). Data on research investments of the 28 IEA member states shows that the money spent on energy efficient technologies and renewable sources of energy stagnated over the past decades (c.f. figure 1, being highly correlated to the development of the oil price [3]. In the late 1970s and early 1980s the support for energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy was increased due to the high oil price [3], but at the same time the budget for research on nuclear energy was raised by roughly the same proportion. For many years the budgets for research and development in the areas of fossil fuels and nuclear power have been significantly higher than these for research done on renewable energy sources and energy efficient technologies.

Figure 1: Development of the allocation of the total R&D budget of IEA member states (in Million Euro) by energy sector from 1974 to 2010 (data from [6])

Given the current environmental issue of climate change, there have to be increased investments in R&D of energy efficiency and renewable energy to reach long-term emissions reductions and achieve carbon-free energy generation. Actual data of 2010 shows that the trend of investments has already started to change in some countries (c.f. figure 2). In Germany the support of R&D of fossil fuels has the smallest share of all energy sectors, as it is in the United States of America. The USA spent most of the R&D budget for energy in 2010 on energy efficiency and renewable energy. Japan strongly supported nuclear energy in 2010, but after the disaster of Fukushima in March of 2011 a rethinking process started and 14 out of 17 nuclear power plants in Japan have been taken offline until January of 2012 [7].

By considering the statistics of 2010 of the R&D budgets of all IEA member states in total, it gets apparent that the share of research done on fossil fuels was smaller compared to other energy sectors, including renewable energy sources (c.f. figure 3). Nuclear power still has the largest governmental support, but the gap to renewable sources of energy tends to get smaller, as it is shown in figure 1.

Figure 2: Allocation of R&D budgets of selected IEA member states (in Million Euro) by energy sector in 2010 (data from [6])

Figure 3: Allocation of the total R&D budget of IEA member states by energy sector (in Million Euro) in 2010 (data from [6])

References

[1] The Climate Group. Smart 2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the information age. Technical report, The Climate Group on behalf of the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), 2008.

[2] M. V. Sokolova and A. Fernandez-Caballero. Multi-agent systems technology for composite decision making in complex systems. In Sustainability in Energy and Buildings, pages 29–38. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009.

[3] L.D.D. Harvey. Energy and the new reality 1: Energy Efficiency and the Demand for Energy services. Earthscan, 2010.

[4] G. Philipson. Ict’s role in the low carbon economy. Technical report, Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), 2010.

[5] S. Caird and R. Roy. Adoption and use of household microgeneration heat technologies. Low Carbon Economy, 1(2):61–70, December 2010.

[6] International Energy Agency (IEA). RD&D Statistics. http://www.iea.org/stats/rd.asp. Accessed: 2013-03-05.

[7] K. Lah. U.N. Experts OK Japan’s nuclear ’stress tests’. http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/31/world/asia/japan-nuclear/index.html, January 2012. Accessed: 2013-03-05.

E-Health

Another major application area of ICT in public institutions is the health sector. Health care is responsible for a large amount of administrative and financial efforts. In Austria health care accounted for about 30 billion EUR in the year 2009, which represents about 11 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) of Austria [1]. The high costs of public health care are the main reason why governments seek methods to achieve efficiency gains in this area. One possibility in this context is the extensive use of information technology. E-health is a subset of e-government [2], but is often discussed in separate, due to its high economical and social relevance. Improvements by electronic support systems in health care are expected from optimized management of medication and a more efficient use of available information [3]. Beside cost efficiency, the e-health approach aims at improving the quality of health care by advanced accessibility, enhanced rapidity in processing and treatment and increased effectiveness of treatments [2]. A more comprehensive use of ICT should bring benefits to all stakeholders in health care, including health professionals, patients, hospital operators and financiers. Especially information management of patient data and medical records provides a large potential of improvements in the current state of the art of health care. An example proofing this argument is the fact, that the inappropriate use of medicine in public hospitals accounts for high costs and additionally can be harmful to patients. Studies in Australia came to the conclusion, that faulty medication accounts for about 600 million Dollar a year [3]. More than half of the mistakes made in medication are considered as “definitely preventable” and furthermore 35 percent of the referrals to hospital are regarded as inappropriate [3].
There are several ICT applications in development or already in use, which address the inefficiencies of current “paper-based, fragmented and duplicated patient management systems” [3] and inaccurate medication:

• Electronic medical records [4] can substitute paper-based medical records of patients, providing the benefit of a lower administration effort of electronic systems compared to traditional record systems. The storage device of electronic medical records usually is a unique smart card per patient, which has to be presented by the patient at any treatment. This e-health card combines the functionalities of confirmation of insurance, electronic billing and storage of medical records. The benefits of such card-based systems are faster patient registration processes, summarized care records available to medicals and easier insurance accounting. Additionally e-health cards reduce the risk of “fraudulent reimbursement claims” [5] compared to the use of paper documents. 
• Medication management systems could address the problem of medication mistakes. Such systems could support the decision on medication types and dosing and therefore ensure adequate medication and prevent errors, that lead to preventable medical incidents and increased costs [3]. Basically such systems provide summarized medication records of patients, listing prescriptions by several medicals involved in treatment [4]. This overview of medication together with detailed patient data could prevent adverse effects and incompatibilities. 
• Decision Support Systems provided to medicals are aiming to achieve significant improve- ments in treatment. Examples of systems offering additional information and knowledge to medical professionals are knowledge enrichment systems or Clinical Decision Support Systems(CDSS), which can be used for decision on treatments, prevention and monitoring, drug prescribing or the calculation of medication doses and scheduling [4]. 
• ICT provides significant improvements to administrative systems applied in health care. Patient management systems and electronic scheduling [4] can reduce the average length of hospital stays and prevent multiple visits in some cases, which enables the optimization of capacity utilization in hospitals. These patient management systems are usually based on e-health cards. This combination allows faster processing of administrative tasks together with reducing intermediate steps, resulting in reduced work load [5]. 
• A rather new approach is telemedicine, which aims at providing health services via ICT networks. The aspired applications of telemedicine can be divided into three categories [6]: 
• Tele-visits are remotely conducted visits of medicals with patients. Tele-visit applications include audio and video communication, as well as the option to share patient data [6]. 
• Tele-consults are consultations of several medicals about a common patient. These systems allow communication as well as shared access to patient data and medical records [6]. Tele-consults should provide the benefit of combined know-how and could enable a more integrated treatment. 
• Tele-monitoring allows patients to collect health data (e.g. weight, blood pressure) and provide it to medicals via ICT networks. Special medical devices assist the patient in data collection and allows the patient to access medical care from home. Tele-monitoring is also termed as patient self-monitoring and is generally used for the treatment of chronical deseases [6]. 

A significant environmental benefit of e-health applications is the reduction in paper use. This starts at providing online health information instead of using information leaflets. One of the most effective applications of ICT regarding to environmental improvements is the use of smart cards, applied as e-health cards for insurance verification and the storage of medical records. Examples of e-health cards are the e-card established in Austria as national insurance card, or the carte vitale, constituting the equivalent in France [2]. E-health card systems are already in use in countries all over the world, for example in Germany, Algeria, Slovenia, Gabon, Azerbaijan, Mexico, Bulgaria [5] and many others. Smart cards in health care bring the benefit of electronic invoicing. The environmental benefit arising from the utilization of smart cards mainly is based on reductions in paper use. Data from France showed that in 2007, 60 percent of all medical care related invoices were processed electronically due to the distribution of 55 million e-health cards [2]. The positive environmental impact of reduced paper use is not restricted to slow down deforestation, because the production of paper consumes energy and therefore causes greenhouse gas emissions. Estimations show that using a computer for about 4 hours accounts for the same CO2 emissions as the production of 150 grams of paper [2]. According to this the dematerialization by e-health applications can enable significant savings of carbon emissions.
Another benefit of telemedicine is the ability to provide health services remotely in rural areas, overcoming long distances with rather low effort. As an example Australia was already considered to be a leader in the advancement of telemedicine already in 2002 [4]. The early development of medical services provided via ICT networks can be related to the large share of remote areas of this country. A positive environmental implication of telemedicine is that it has the potential to reduce travel routes for visits and consultations [6].

References

[1] Statistik Austria. Gesundheitsausgaben in Österreich. http://www.statistik.at/web_de/statistiken/gesundheit/gesundheitsausgaben/index.html. Accessed: 2013-03-05.

[2] Bio Intelligence Service. Impacts of information and communication technologies on energy efficiency, final  report. ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/fp7/ict/docs/sustainable-growth/ict4ee-final-report_en.pdf, September 2008. Accessed: 2013-02-12.

[3] G. Philipson. Ict’s role in the low carbon economy. Technical report, Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), 2010.

[4] J. Houghton. Information technology and the revolution in healthcare. Working Paper. Victoria University, Melbourne, 2002.

[5] Gemalto. Electronic healthcare solutions - putting the patient at the center of modernization. http://www.gemalto.com/brochures/download/electronic_healthcare.pdf, August 2010. Accessed: 2013-03-05.

[6] CSC Healthcare Group. Telemedicine: An Essential Technology for Reformed Healthcare. http://www.ehealthnews.eu/images/stories/pdf/csc_telemedicine.pdf, May 2011. Accessed: 2013-03-05.

E-Government

“E-government refers to government’s use of information and communication technologies to exchange information and services with citizens, businesses and other arms of government” and it is an approach “to make public administrations more efficient and effective” [1]. Like private enterprises, governmental institutions need to deal economically with their budget and therefore try to achieve cost reductions. One of the main benefits of e-government services is that they enable more cost efficient administrative work flows and services. This is achieved by the dematerialization of documents and by optimized administrative systems. Beside economic goals governments try to realize improvements of their services by using information technology. The Internet is used as additional delivery channel and access point, allowing fast and wide distribution of information. Users benefit from easier access to services and faster service times, without the need to travel to agencies or the expense of sending paper forms. In summary the main reasons for the implementation of electronic services by governments are cost and time efficiency, as well as an improved quality of service:

• Cost reductions can be realized by the optimization of administrative structures and processes. Governments try to achieve a higher “value for money” [2]. 
• Service quality is improved by better accessibility and usability of public services [1], together with a wide range of functionality provided on several platforms. In this context e-governmental services tempt to “meet users needs” [2]. This includes a quick and easy access to governmental information and services, achieved by a consistent look and feel of electronic services. 

E-government is characterized by the supply of public services via a variety of channels. In the past the options of accessing services where restricted to the visitation of governmental departments and mail correspondence in some chases. The current development of electronic services is focused on online and voice based services [2]. The main delivery channel of e-governmental services is the Internet. This channel is supplemented by line telephone and mobile phone networks, which experiences a current trend due to the proliferation of mobile devices [3]. There are various applications and specifications of e-government at the moment:

• E-taxation refers to the process of citizens and businesses conducting their tax related activities electronically. The most common example of e-taxation is the functionality provided to individuals to enter their account information for tax return [2].
• E-voting is an electronic service of governments, substituting traditional elections [1]. The benefits of e-voting are reductions of paper ballots and time and location flexibility of voters. 
• M-government is a subset of e-government, using mobile devices, such as mobile phones or tablet computers to access public information and governmental services anywhere and anytime [3]. In m-government data transfer is realized by wireless and mobile phone networks. Governments want to exploit the current trend of mobile technology to advance the distribution of their electronic services. 
• An electronic identification card is a type of smart card [1], usually equipped with integrated circuits, providing the ability to store user related information. The primary purpose of these cards is identification and authentication for several e-governmental services. 

An important issue in the context of e-governmental services is to ensure privacy and security [2]. Services delivered via the Internet are endangered by data theft and fraud. Since e-governmental services are often related to finances (e.g. e-tax) and always involve detailed personal data, the need for highly secure systems is all the more important. If the requirements of information security and privacy of personal data are not fulfilled, the acceptance of electronic services will suffer. This has negative economical as well as environmental impact, because the benefit of electronic services is increasing together with the amount of users. Electronic services are characterized by low marginal costs, which means that the increase of total costs by a single additional user is quite low. The fixed costs of technical equipment like servers, network infrastructure and computer systems take up the largest share of costs of electronic services. Therefore the total costs per user of electronic service decrease with increasing numbers of users, because the fixed costs are divided by user numbers. The costs of electronic services can be directly linked to energy and resource use, which means that the environmental impact develops directly proportional to the development of costs. In summary this means, that the economical and envi- ronmental benefits of electronic services rise with the number of users.

The potential environmental benefits of e-government cover reductions in paper usage due to dematerialization [3], as well as energy and emissions savings by various applications. Significant carbon emissions reductions are expected from library management systems which support e-archives, to reduce emissions and paper demand of libraries [1]. The reductions in paper usage refer to the approach of the paperless office [3]. This is a term for the dematerialization of paper forms and electronic administration. In e-government this includes administrative activities of processing service cases, which can be operated electronically instead of using paper forms, reductions in paper ballots and electronic communication. Especially e-taxation is considered to have large potential in achieving paper use reductions. Data from Europe shows, that in 2005 between 5 and 20 percent of citizens declared their income tax online and between 10 and 20 percent of business declared their value-added tax electronically [1]. It is estimated that these numbers rise to about 80 percent for citizens and almost 100 percent for businesses until 2020 [1]. All environmental improvements by e-government are endangered by low numbers of users, which could even result in a negative environmental impact in total. An example in this context is paper consumption, which is generally reduced by electronic services. This reduction will only be significant, if the majority of users access governmental services electronically. Due to the coexistence of traditional governmental service supply (higher paper demand) and electronic services (higher energy demand), low usage rates of electronic services, paired with high usage rates of traditional delivery channels would lead to a combination of high energy demand and high paper usage [3].

References

[1] Bio Intelligence Service. Impacts of information and communication technologies on energy efficiency, final  report. ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/fp7/ict/docs/sustainable-growth/ict4ee-final-report_en.pdf, September 2008. Accessed: 2013-02-12.

[2] Australian Government Information Management  Office. Responsive government - a new service agenda. http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/2006-e-government-strategy/docs/e-gov_strategy.pdf, March 2006. Accessed: 2013-03-05.

[3] P. Fernando and A. Okuda. Escap technical paper: Green ICT - a “cool” factor in the wake of multiple meltdowns. http://www.unescap.org/idd/working%20papers/IDD_TP_09_10_of_WP_7_2_907.pdf, December 2009. Accessed: 2013-02-12.

Energy Supply

Explore the Mind Map to learn about the sustainable use of ICT in Energy Supply!

Today’s electricity grids are characterized by bad energy efficiency because of loss in transmission and the need for overcapacity to meet variations in energy demand. Another restrictive feature of traditional electricity grids is the single way of communication and energy transfer. To overcome these restrictions and to make the distribution of energy more efficient, innovative approaches are required. ICT plays a major role in improving today’s electrical grids in order to meet the requirements of a low carbon society.

Renewable Sources of Energy

ICT systems allow more efficient operating and maintenance of power systems using renewable sources of energy like water, wind and sunlight. For example there are approaches in development to monitor wind turbines using a model-based method of neural networks [1]. Therefore the temperature of the generator bearings is measured to predict failures. This could avoid wind turbines standing still and help increasing the productivity of such systems.

Information technology could also improve the management of distributed renewable energy sources like home photovoltaic panels. There are approaches in research that add processors to control arrays of photovoltaic units. This enables remote management of these energy generating systems and allows creating central management platforms and the establishment of integrated networks [2]. A different approach in research shows that Fuzzy models can be used to control photovoltaic power systems including the required conversion to obtain this source of energy [3].

Another example for improved management of renewable energy generators enabled by ICT is the approach to predict the amounts of energy generated by wind turbines. Therefore short-term forecasts of wind speed and direction of several observation points have to be considered and used to calculate the resulting power output of the wind turbines located in these areas [4]. As wind energy inheres large variability such predictions would be very useful to manage the compliance of energy demands in future electricity grids. Increasing efficiency of wind turbines implies techniques to estimate wind speeds. In connection to this, approaches based on self-organizing neural networks can be found in scientific literature [5].

References

[1] J. Xiang, S. Watson, and Y. Liu. Smart monitoring of wind turbines using neural networks. In Robert J. Howlett, Lakhmi C. Jain, and Shaun H. Lee, editors, Sustainability in Energy and Buildings, pages 1–8. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009.

[2] C. Mallett. Network-enabled intelligent photovoltaic arrays. In  Robert J. Howlett, Lakhmi C. Jain, and Shaun H. Lee, editors, Sustainability in Energy and Buildings, pages 39–47. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009.

[3] A. Hajjaji, M. BenAmmar, J. Bosche, M. Chaabene, and A. Rabhi. Integral fuzzy control for photovoltaic power systems. In Robert J. Howlett, Lakhmi C. Jain, and Shaun H. Lee, editors, Sustainability in Energy and Buildings, pages 219–228. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009.

[4] M. Khalid and A. V. Savkin. Development of short-term prediction system for wind power generation based on multiple observation points.  In Robert J. Howlett, Lakhmi C. Jain, and Shaun H. Lee, editors, Sustainability in Energy and Buildings, pages 89–98. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009.

[5] G. Cirrincione and A. Marvuglia. A novel self-organizing neural technique for wind speed mapping. In Robert J. Howlett, Lakhmi C. Jain, and Shaun H. Lee, editors, Sustainability in Energy and Buildings, pages 209–217. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009.

Smart Grids

One approach to modernize and improve the efficiency of electrical grids is marked by the term Smart Grid, which can be defined as “a set of software and hardware tools that enable generators to route power more efficiently” [1]. In more detail, the efficiency gains can be achieved by additional functionalities of electrical grids, enabling two-way communication between power providers and customers and sensing along transmissions lines. Therefore a Smart Grid is characterized by a high grade of automation and the use of digital technology, that enables the grid to respond to changes in power demand [2].

Traditional electrical grids grew over decades to it’s current size and can be constituted as patchwork, which is the reason for inefficiencies. The electrical grid of the United States of America experienced a growth in peak energy demand since 1982 and was expanded to keep up with the increasing transmission [3]. At the time the grid was designed it was not necessary to consider environmental aspects or energy efficiency. To meet today’s requirements a modernization of the electrical grids of industrial nations all over the world is needed. Therefore ICT technology can be integrated throughout the grid to optimize them. From an environmental view an increase of efficiency of electric grids would be big step towards low carbon emission goals: Only a 5 percent efficiency gain of the electrical grid of the USA would equate the greenhouse gas emissions of 53 million cars. In total the USA produce 25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, while half of U.S. power production is still based on fossil fuels [3]. These numbers illustrate the enormous savings potential of optimizing power generation and transmission processes.

Beside the U.S. government the European Union communicates the important role of Smart Grids for future energy management and fulfillment of Europe’s energy and climate goals in compliance with the EU2020 agenda. The Smart Grid will give energy consumers strong incentives to save energy, because of the distribution of smart meters and information and communication systems: “It opens up unprecedented possibilities for consumers to directly control and manage their individual consumption patterns, providing, in turn, strong incentives for efficient energy use if combined with time-dependent electricity prices” [4]. According to the communication of the European Comission there are projects which show that households which have been equipped with smart meters reduced their energy consumption by as much as 10 percent. The Smart Grid is considered as “the backbone of the future decarbonised power system” [4], as it enables the integration of renewable energy sources. A study by the European Bio Intelligence Service detected a possible reduction in carbon emissions by 9 percent by the year 2020 due to Smart Grids [5].

 Figure 1 illustrates the features of a Smart Grid. Electricity is increasingly generated from renewable sources and distributed by the Smart Grid to private and business customers. All over the grid intelligent ICT systems are implemented, enabling faster failure detection and increasing reliability. There are control centers for management and operation, which are analyzing information on energy consumption from the grid in real-time to forecast demand peaks. Customers are provided with smart meters and Intelligent Building Systems to monitor and control their energy consumption. The power generators of customers’ homes are connected to the Smart Grid and can deliver power to the community that is not needed locally. The Smart Grid also provides plug-in functionality for electric cars to reload their batteries [6].

Figure 1: Smart Grid [6]

The advantages of a Smart Grid, arising from the use of ICT to enable bidirectional energy and information exchange, support the development towards a more sustainable energy management [2]:

• Reduced losses in transmission of electricity and therefore a higher level of energy efficiency. 
• A higher grade of automation and more efficient technical equipment will decrease operation, management and maintenance costs, resulting in lower power costs. 
• Quicker electric recovery in case of outages, because of automatic rerouting by the Smart Grid. Failures will occur less often and can be detected and isolated faster, avoiding large-scale blackouts. • Reduced power outages imply improved security. 
• Integration of large-scale renewable energy power plants. 
• Smart Grids also enable the integration of distributed small-scale sources of renewable energy, like customer-owned power generators (e.g. photovoltaics). 
• Increased consumer participation and control, due to real-time information on power consumption and cost control functionality (smart meters). 

Figure 2: Grid connected solar home system [7]

In contrast to traditional centralized energy generation by large-scale power plants, using fossil or nuclear sources, the trend in renewable energy production is towards decentralized small-scale energy generators. This brings new requirements for electricity grids, in order to integrate various types of generators with partly wider spatial distribution. Energy generators using sun or wind power can be installed as part of buildings, to cover part of the local energy demand and to supply energy to the grid at times when some part of the produced energy is not needed locally. Figure 2 shows a schema of a home photovoltaic (PV) system that is connected to the electrical grid. The solar PV system generates electricity that is used to power building appliances and also can be stored in backup batteries to partly balance supply shortcomings due to the dependence of PV systems on weather conditions. If needed additional power can be purchased from the grid, while it is also possible to feed electricity back to the grid.

The approach of small-scale distributed power generation allows parts of the electricity network to operate in separation from the main grid, assuming that enough power is generated to cover the local energy demand. Such areas are called Micro Grids, which are based on the principle that energy customers can supply their own demand by distributed small-scale power generators, as well as serve exceeding power to their local neighbors [8]. Micro Grids enable the development of more sustainable energy generation and management, and could create stronger incentives for the distribution of small-scale power generators to gain a certain level of independence from the main electricity grid and decrease energy costs. The financial effort of investing in micro generation systems is much lower in comparison to large scale power plants, which could be an important aspect for public participation. Another big environmental advantage of Micro Grids is the reduction of energy losses and thereby greenhouse gas emissions. Today’s centralized power generation and distribution suffer from losses of 7 to 10 percent of total energy generation due to long distances of transmission [8].

Concepts based on the idea of buildings as small-scale power plants require Smart Grids to integrate them into large-scale electricity grids [2]. Therefore applications are needed to coordinate different energy sources and adjust energy demand and supply to gain maximum efficiency from generators. Such systems for modeling, analysis and control of multiple energy sources are a current research topic [9]. The main feature of a control system for multiple energy sources is the adjustment of energy production, energy consumption and energy storage (cf. figure 3). By designing a system for this purpose following features and circumstances have to be considered: [9]

• Energy production by wind and solar generators is stochastic since intensity of wind and sunlight varies in relation to the weather situation. Therefore the system needs an applicable model to assume and predict the produced amount of energy. 
• To optimize the alignment of energy demand and supply, also an assumption of energy demand is needed. 
• In consideration of these requirements the system has to achieve a optimum balance of energy production, consumption and storage. 

 

Figure 3: Control system for multiple energy sources [9]

References

[1] The Climate Group. Smart 2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the information age. Technical report, The Climate Group on behalf of the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), 2008.

[2] U.S. Department of Energy. What is the smart grid? http://www.smartgrid.gov/the_smart_grid. Accessed: 2013-02-12.

[3] U.S. Department of Energy. The Smart Grid: An Introduction. http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandMedia/DOE_SG_Book_Single_Pages%281%29.pdf, 2008. Accessed: 2013-02-12.

[4] European Commission. Smart grids: from innovation to deployment, April 2011.

[5] Bio Intelligence Service. Impacts of information and communication technologies on energy efficiency, final  report. ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/fp7/ict/docs/sustainable-growth/ict4ee-final-report_en.pdf, September 2008. Accessed: 2013-02-12.

[6] Consolidated Edison, Inc. Smart Grid Initiative. http://www.coned.com/publicissues/smartgrid.asp. Accessed: 2012-01-06.

[7] B. Metz. Controlling climate change. Cambridge University Press, 2010.

[8] R. M. Kamel. Carbon emissions reduction and power losses saving besides voltage profiles improvement using micro grids. Low Carbon Economy, 01(01):1–7, 2010.

[9] A. Naamane and N. K. M’Sirdi. Macsyme: Modelling, analysis and control for systems with multiple energy sources. In Robert J. Howlett, Lakhmi C. Jain, and Shaun H. Lee, editors, Sustainability in Energy and Buildings, pages 229–238. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009.