Power Transmission Lines

The electric grid in Brazil is forecasted to beginning being modernized between 2012 and early 2013, according to IG, a Brazilian news website, with the set up of home smart meters. Aneel (the Brazilian Agency for the Electrical Energy) seeks to approve the regulation to make this change in the next few months. This is the first step in Brazil to implement a smart grid – the electric grid supporting energy micro-generation, its retail and several services related to high-quality information on electric use and supply.

With these new services the consumer can keep track daily and monthly of the energy bill. The Brazilian government hopes to save energy using home electricity management software. Aneel will change the price based on the time of the day, making the all system more efficient.

There are some pilot projects, like AES Eletropaulo’s (one of the Brazilian energy providers) that is running a trial with with 2000 houses.

Smart Meterhouses in the Ipiranga neighborhood, São Paulo. There is a similar project in Parintins, and also one by Cemig (another provider) in Sete Lagoas city, located in the Minas Gerais state.

The next steps include introducing electrical micro-generation in the grid using solar and wind energy, putting new consuming elements such as electrical vehicles and smart appliances into the grid, and introducing a new electricity business model, allowing anyone to produce, to sell and to buy these resources when necessary. In Brazil, this model is called “net zero” home: it involves smart appliances, car charging and control centres, and the required communication and management systems supporting the new scenario. The government will give incentives to encourage consumers to buy smart devices and to save more electricity.

However, changing to the new grid isn’t cheap: it was estimated about 150 euros for each smart meter (the new device that will measure energy consumption). And this isn’t the entire cost: it is necessary to change a lot of power transmission elements and distribution lines in the grid infrastructure. It is hoped that this investiment wouldn’t be paid by the consumers, since other costs can be reduced, like maintenance and human support, offsetting the needed investment.

This image shows the interior of a smart grid meter tested by Mike Davis of IOActive. Credit: Mike Davis and Technology Review.

The Smart Grid is the intelligent electricity grid: a 2-way-data-communication flow that can provide different kinds of services and utilities and make a best use of distributed energy generation. Comparing the Smart Grid to the one we are used to, we can perceive one big benefit and one big problem, both related to security.

The current grid has few centralized electricity generation systems. So, in order to destroy or significantly damage it, one has to strike out few points in the network: the big electricity generation centres. It may be difficult, for example, due to the security of the airspace of the area to be attacked, because, to make that, it is necessary to destroy physically part of the network, but still it requires targeting just a few targets.

What if it were a massively distributed electricity generation system? At first sight such a system should be more robust.

However, since you have more than one possible electric flow in the grid (remember that, int the smart grid, we have a distributed energy generation system with the big generators and many microproducers), you need a way of choosing a supplier. This requires introducing a communication channel and, therefore, a new problem: when the electricity grid becomes an electricity system with a 2-way-data-communication flow, it faces the some kind of security issues of the Internet.

Thus, regarding an electric grid, we have, at least, two kinds of vulnerabilities: a physical and a cyber attack. On the one hand, the older grid is easy to damage through a physical attack, because it doesn’t have many distributed information sources. Information, as how much and where do the customers consume energy, is harder to reach, since it is on a private network, not on the Internet. There is an electrical meter at each point of delivery, and to bill one has to go there and read it, or, in the best case, the meter sends to a central office the information.

On the other hand we have the smart grid, that is, an electric grid with 2-way-data-communication flow and intelligent management of a distributed source system. Here, there are lots of energy sources and it can be very difficult to stop all of them. However, we have a lot of public information (as how the energy is consuming) in this kind of grid – and if information and communication are placed together… there’s a potential for a cyber attack! The smart grid is a big network built by so many nodes of smart meters frequently put in vulnerable places and we don’t have secure information on every node’s status, e.g. if it was not attacked and turned into a malicious network node. If we have malicious smart meters in the grid, we don’t have assurance for its information and a lot of problems could arise, like customer data mess, wrong data analysis, suggestions of eletrical consumption behaviour changes of the costumers, etc. That is: a big confusion! Or, perhaps, something even worse, like a black-out.

According to an MIT article, the hurried deployment of smart-grid technology could lead to critical infrastructure and private homes vulnerabilities, and both smart-grid hardware and software lack the necessary safeguards to protect against meddling. The funding from the U.S. government’s 2009 stimulus package is encouraging utilities to install smart-grid network-connected devices to help intelligent monitoring and power usage manage. Customers might, for example, agree to let a utility remotely turn off their air conditioners at times of peak use in exchange for a discount. And the possibility that somebody remotely controls devices means that another one could make the same. Imagine that can be a new kind of terrorist attack!

Then, to minimize probabilities that such problems occur, a recent report from Pike Research forecasts that global investment in smart meter security will be in total $1.6 billion during the period from 2010 to 2015. In other recent article in Pike Research, senior analyst Bob Lockhart explains:

“It would be naïve to think that smart meters will not be successfully attacked. They will be. In fact, smart meters represent a worst-case scenario in terms of security: the devices lack sufficient power to execute strong security software; they are placed in physically non-secure locations; and they are installed in volumes large enough that one or two may not be missed. Therefore, the only valid cyber security approach for smart metering is to assume from the outset that some devices will be successfully attacked and create sufficient resiliency to allow the remainder of the network to survive.”

We can imagine several different kinds of attacks, from simply turning off your air conditioning to complicate ones, such as a big blackout. So, the key question is how the network will be able to react to an attack and what types of attacks we could face. The network has to be prepared to these situations.

What if you could use your body as a data transmission medium? This kind of research aready exists; it was started in Japan few years ago and continued by Korean and by Telecom Italia Lab researchers. It is possible to transmit data through the human skin with a 10 Mbps bandwidth, which is faster than
wireless technologies such as bluetooth. In this article, Korean researchers have thought of a medical application using this data transmission technology, but we could go beyond that and imagine other
services.

If we assume that human skin data transmission is economically viable, we could imagine a scenario in which everybody could adopt it and have a special device or handphone with the funcionality of decoding electrical signals transmited through the body. In this way, as an example, a supermarket supporting this technology would enable you to buy products by touch. Then you say: ‘I am sorry??’. Let me explain it…

But shopping could go beyond that! When you are choosing a product to put in your shopping cart, you could experiment some feelings related to the products: since you can capture the product identity by touching it, this information can be relayed via your cell phone, along with your profile, to some  merchant’s website to deliver you more info that can be displayed in a variety of ways.

This can really give a twist to the meaning of window shopping!

Much have been said about smart grids and maybe the idea of controlling the house energy at distance might seem futuristic to a lot of people. But, as a matter of fact, it is closer to reality than you would imagine. A good example is the Cisco Home Energy Management solution. It comprises the Cisco home energy controller (HEC) for consumers and the Energy Management Software which hosts services for utilities. It gives to utility companies the right tools to enhance customer satisfaction and effectively implement demand management, load shedding, and pricing programs for residential deployments.

This system includes a support touchscreen display, common networking and security protocols and energy management applications. It enables consumers to save energy and money with demand-response, managing energy budget based on peak pricing and time of use, and thus be more aware about their energy use.

Furthermore, the Cisco Home Energy Management isn’t alone in the energy saving market. Other examples include Google Power Meter and Microsoft Hohm.

There are, indeed, plenty of products already in the market to manage energy consumption in the home. Why aren’t they much more popular? Clearly the cost is a factor, but also the lack of standardization plays a role. There is a need for having appliances producers to provide information on energy utilization in a standardized form. Is it that most of them are reluctant to provide this information?

Imagine if when buying a new fridge I get the information on how much energy “money” I will and up spending in using it! That would make me think twice about the selection of a model. It is amazing how far energy consumption is from our habits.

Just think: you go visit a friend and if you need to make a call from his phone you ask permission and you might even offer to pay the price (it was very common in the past when calls where individually metered) but you never think about asking permission for recharging your cell phone using his sockets. The fact is that electricity in the day by day usage is felt as “free” which of course is completely wrong.

Having a monitoring device would raise awareness, may be some producers prefer we are not fully aware!

In dark and light blue, there are, respectively, the Brazilian states affected and partially affected by the blackout. In red, there is the Luiz Gonzaga substation.

In the night between last Thursday and Friday a blackout took place over 8 states in the north-east of Brazil, according to  BBC and G1 (the news site of the biggest television station in Brazil). Edison Lobão, Brazilian Minister of Mines and Energy, said it was probably caused by a fault originated in the Luiz Gonzaga substation (located in the city of Jatobá, state of Pernambuco). Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff took some decisions to handle the situation. It was announced that Rousseff wants greater accuracy in maintaining the network by the energy agencies, and better supervision of the power grid by ANEEL – National Agency of Electrical Energy in Brazil. Some of these affected states include cities hosting the 2014 Football World Cup matches, but according to Edison Lobão there is no reason to be concerned, because the system is “good although it has some faults”, like every big system.

If energy in Brazil were managed through a smart grid, the impact of blackouts would be much less. One of the advantages of moving to a smart grid is to survive different kinds of localized network failures, such as those which happened in Brazil last week. With sensors and smart meters, it is possible to identify problems when they occur and take the right decision to solve or minimize their impact. Redirecting energy from/to alternative routes could be a solution to this problem and it can be possible in the new grid.

Blackouts are more common than most people imagine. In 2003 there was a memorable one in Italy, affecting all the country except the islands of Sardinia and Capri. It lasted for about 12 hours, also affecting part of Switzerland near Geneva for 3 hours. Also in 2003, the second biggest blackout in history left about 55 million people in darkness in the north-east of U.S. and south-east of Canada. But the record is the 1999 Brazilian Blackout, which is estimated to have affected between 75 to 97 million people.

Changing to a new network architecture requires a large investment. Nowadays, Brazil has about 63 million consumer units and just changing the measurement devices to smart meters represents a spending of 7.5 to 19 billion dollars. However, even though the smart metering isn’t enough to transform the network into a smart grid, it may be a first step since it should increase the consumer ability to better manage the electricity bill and her electrical devices from remote, thus helping in decreasing the load on the network.

Obama and eletric car in Michigan

I guess most of us have been concerned, at one time or another, on how we can take care of our environment in a sustainable way. The U.S. Government, last year, decided to spend billions of dollars to build factories specializing in the production of batteries for electrical cars. That would also support some cities in Michigan that have been hit by the collapse of the auto industry. Just to get an idea, the U.S. have invested 2.4 billion dollars nationwide through the Recovery Act and by the middle of last year, they started the construction of the last of ninth battery factories supported by grants of this Act. This is a part of a bigger plan, that is,  to fund 30 factories for electric vehicles and their components. With this, they hope to produce batteries 70 percent cheaper, supporting the annual production of 500,000 electric vehicles and, of course, creating a lot of new jobs, according to MIT.

But the big question is if they could sell fast enough to generate sufficient return on this investment, since the sales market  of electric cars hasn’t taken off yet. Some experts say the production of electric cars can exceed demand. Menahem Anderman, founder of Total Battery Consulting, envisions a scenario with fewer than 100,000 electric cars sold per year in the U.S. by 2014. He considers a bigger panorama that include the limited range of the Nissan’s Leaf Model, which the Nissan company says will be able to run 100 miles without recharging, and the big diference of prices between electric cars and plug-in hybrids.

This could be seen as a long-term project if the goal weren’t, as president Obama expressed in his State of the Union address few days ago, to make the United States to be the first country in the world to put one million advanced technology vehicles on the road by 2015. At first it looks a very difficult proposition, but they are acting: for example, as part of nationwide investment, about 118 million dollars were awarded to Ener1, Inc. This company produces advanced lithium-ion battery systems for electric vehicles, grid energy storage and industrial electronics. This grant was devoted to expand its production of advanced batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles.

However, to achieve this goal is not going to be easy. Toyota took over 10 years to sell a million Priuses, its hybrid car. Electric cars are more expensive than hybrid ones and without big consumer rebates, the Obama’s words may remain just a dream. Actually, plug-in hybrids can be cheaper, and they don’t have the range limitations that could squeeze the market of pure eletric cars.

There is an U.S. administration endeavor to make the president Obama’s words true. It has three parts: supporting electric vehicle manufacturing and acquisition through significant consumer rebates, investment in research and development and a new program to encourage investment in electric vehicle infrastructure. But in fact, in a press release from the Department of Energy that shows some details of the future President’s budget, which wasn’t announced yet, there is a change of the term “advanced vehicle” to “electric car”, because that’s what he really meant. And maybe some of these cars can be, indeed, hybrid cars.

With an infrastructure to support electric cars and the projection of their cost falling more and more, everybody may become interested in electric cars. And this is also the perfect scenario to be a nature’s friend and reduce the CO2 emission. That’s a good idea specially because the U.S. is the country with the largest carbon emission in history.

Of course, in order to be nature friendly, the electricity to power the car should be produced through carbon free production plant (like solar or wind) which, unfortunately, is not the case today!

There is an increasing interest for modernizing the current electric grid used in most of the world, because of economic and environmental factors. The need stems from the inefficiency of the current grid structure.

Picture from the interesting article: Smart Grids and the Cloud, why are they linked?

Electrical energy transmission between the power plant and the final consumer generates heat (as any form of “work” of course) and this reduces the amount of energy that is available at the point of utilization. The heat is generated by the electrical currents, the bigger it is the more heat is generated. This is why transmission lines carry the energy at high voltage, to decrease the amount of current being transported. Rather than having a distribution grid connecting far away points (longer lines means more heat generated) it would be better to have meshed networks with many generation points to shorten the path from the generation to the consumption. Smart grids are right on the spot. But, of course, this would require increasing the number of generation point and this is where alternative energy sources may come handy (like home production through solar panels).

With the increasing use of technology increases the demand of electricity. According to EIA (U.S. Energy Information Administration – Independent Statistics and Analysis), the document International Energy Outlook 2010 – Highlights (http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/highlights.html) states that:

“World marketed energy consumption increases by 49 percent from 2007 to 2035 in the Reference case. Total energy demand in the non-OECD countries increases by 84 percent, compared with an increase of 14 percent in the OECD countries” where the reference case is a scenario assuming that current laws and policies remain unchanged throughout the projection period.

In this scenario, we expect a growing energy production. According to the Renewable Global Status Report 2009 nowadays  a large percentage of global electricity is generated by power plants based on fossil fuel. This is responsible for large amounts of CO2 and CO emission which contributes to global warming. This motivates a series of research related to alternative energy sources.

Making it easy to use alternative energy sources is both an ecological as an economic issue.

The problem today is that in general alternative energies are costlier than fossil ones and their production/transport may also have some undesirable side effect. With advances in technology, alternative energy sources may become increasingly accessible and economically viable, while traditional sources such as fossil and nuclear become increasingly expensive. The limited availability of oil, natural gas, coal and forest reserves, and the disposal of nuclear waste are increasing the cost of energy over time, making alternative energy sources more interesting and stimulating the adoption of smart grid.

The work to be done remains significant (the spread in cost today is 2 to 3 in favor of fossil fuels and also there is a need to find convincing biz models for micro generation. Here is where Telecommunications can contribute and this is what we are studying at the Future Centre.

In the future can be economically viable a car that uses hydrogen as fuel.

The idea to use water as a fuel seems an evolution of the scientific fiction “Back to the Future” in which Dr. Brown was putting banana peel in the fuel tank of Velorium, the time machine. But it isn’t something new. The Indian business man Ratan Tata will finance a project to create a car that uses water as fuel. This car will use a technology developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – the MIT, in which water is used to produce hydrogen and this in turns to obtain energy.

The energy that comes from hydrogen in this way is completely clean. When the hydrogen is burning energy is released and the product of combustion is water. We don’t have any CO₂ emission and imagine how amazing is it!

Clearly you cannot just produce hydrogen from water: you need to inject energy in the system and that amount of energy is obviously (the second law of thermodynamics is there to remind us) greater than the amount of energy that will be later released by burning the hydrogen. So, the crucial point is to use some sort of “freely available” energy to extract the hydrogen from water.

Hence, one of main challenges is the efficient hydrogen production. Nowadays the majority of processes that produce hydrogen focus on the hydrolysis, but other processes use natural gas and others sources (and most of them produce CO2!), like, unbelievably, starch. If we can produce it at low cost using hydrolysis, we can have the best renewable energy ever because from water we take hydrogen and from the hydrogen combustion we have water, in a perfect cycle (but don’t forget that we need energy to activate and maintain the process!). The reason for consuming energy in this hydrogen extraction cycle is that it is easier to transport hydrogen than solar energy and hydrogen packs much more energy than a battery.

The real benefit in terms of CO2 would come from using solar, wind or another ecological source of energy to extract the hydrogen. However a big challenge remains, that is safety, because the hydrogen, even in low concentration, is very much flammable.

American and Swiss researchers from California Institute of Technology created a device that uses solar energy and water to produce hydrogen using cerim oxide. Today, the efficiency isn’t high – only 0.7%, but they hope it may reach approximately 20% and be, in the future, economically viable. If it becames true we can have an energy revolution.

Many applications could be developed if we have the high capacity Internet access provided by the optical fiber at home. One of them would be online high definition games with multiple players.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_eye

Star Trek Online Game

Nowadays, online games don’t exploit all our sight capability. The human vision is composed by binocular and peripherical vision, ranging from about 120 to 170 degrees, once we take into account the saccadic movement of the eye. On the vertical, we have a field of view of 135 degrees. Based on this information and assuming a 30-inch display and an observer at 30 cm from it, we would use just a field of 90×74 degrees.

http://www.icf.at/en/6000/how_much_bandwidth.html

According to the reference above, it would take about 15-20 Mbit/s to stream a single HD video but of course we can compress it to 10 Mbps without significant loss in quality. Now, imagine how much would be needed to simulate the feeling of immersion in an online game. This kind of game is rendered on a remote server that sends the HD video to the player. To have a sense of immersion in the game, fully exploiting our eyesight, we would need to receive at least three HD videos horizontally! And the double is needed to cover also the vertical! Thus we need about 60 Mbit/s to be immerse in game!

You might wonder about using a larger screen. Indeed moving to a 100″ screen would provide the sense of immersion in terms of vision angle. However, the HD resolution is too low with respect to the one of our eyes and if we were to look at such a big HD screen from a distance of 30 cm we would see plenty of pixels, red blue and green dots rather than a smooth image. To get  smooth image where no pixel is seen we need to move to the 4K standard (8 Mpixels) and that would require 70 Mbps of bandwidth.

Additionally, in many on line games, like point and shoot, what the player wants is the capability of looking in different directions, as he would do in a room by moving his head. This requires more screens. Whichever way you look at it true on line gamers are bandwidth hungry!

A lot of improvements need to be done in visual perception area and even more in what is related to games, to make this market more attractive. Of course, it is not just a matter of bandwidth, the careful design of the interface plays (!) a major role in this area.

Smart Grid Graphic

In a scenario where the energy consumption and the cost of energy production are rising, it’s necessary to consider alternatives to upgrade the current electric grid, and the smart grid is for sure a very good option. This term has been used since, at least, 2005 after the publication of the article “Toward a smart grid” by Amin and Wollenberg. The central idea of a smart grid can be seen on Wikipedia.

With the development of technology to produce electricity using micro-power generators, consumers assume a new role in the network as potential producers. Thus, as the concept of the invisible hand of Adam Smith, the network becomes a market scenario with variation of electricity supply and demand and, so, consequently its price could change.

Another big gain for the energy consumer-producer, in the smart grid scenario, is the use of 2-way communications in the grid. Nowadays, we can also use the network for transmitting data and voice. With smart meters, we can have control on the spending for electricity in each socket and light in our home. There are also pilot projects, such as Google Power Meter which uses smart meters and home appliances, that allow consumers to control their energy costs from remote.

We hope that, with the use of smart grids, the price of electricity will not increase so much as it would do in the current scenario. So we might have better economical expectations, since nearly all is based on energy availability to produce goods and services.