Smart Software Applications for a Low Carbon Economy

Introduction

The energy and power system infrastructure created by the utilities are unidirectional and have largely remained the same with purpose of transmitting and distributing electricity from generators to consumers. The current grid is over engineered to withstand peak demands, which are infrequent and thus, making it inefficient.

Farhangi (2010) states on the current energy and power system infrastructure that “It converts only one-third of fuel energy into electricity, without recovering the waste heat. Almost 8% of its output is lost along its transmission lines, while 20% of its generation capacity exits to meet peak demand only (i.e., it is in use only 5% of the time).”

Climate change, increasing demand in energy and development of innovative new internet technology are converging with current grid to drive the development of new energy efficient smart grid to help mankind meet the challenges of climate change.

A Smart grid according to the United State Department of Energy (DOE) would have the following characteristics (source: www.netl.doe.gov/moderngrid/):

• 1.

  Self healing – Sensors with controls to respond using intelligent software to predict, detect and respond to problems.

• 2.

  Motivate consumers to actively participate in the operation of the grid – Intelligent smart software connected to the energy network helping consumer’s take better control of homes and business for a low carbon economy.

• 3.

  Resist attack – Fault tolerant and resistant to physical and cyber attacks.

• 4.

  Quality power – Software to help consumers choose quality of power at different prices.

• 5.

  Generation options– Accommodate wide variety of generation options, including green power.

• 6.

  Electricity market – Technology to provide real time price of energy to the market to mitigate energy demand and thus bringing more consumer and sellers to the electricity market.

• 7.

  Run more efficiently - ICT components to optimise assets, reduce costs, enable low cost generation and increase asset management visibility by removing bottleneck and congestion in the grid network. In addition, help with the reporting and strategic planning of the asset.

Smart grid would make consumers use energy more economically and is being linked to renewable energy targets and reducing carbon emissions. Smart grid should add functionality for monitoring, analysis, communication and control capabilities to maximize the efficiency and throughput to reduce the energy consumption for a low carbon economy. In addition, would provide visibility and pervasive control, to help utilities to transfer energy economically and efficiently. Smart grid would be based on advanced information and communication technology (ICT) components like microprocessor, software technology, communications and the internet (Tai & O'hOgain, 2009). These features are compared in Table 1.