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Vienna Smart City
Smart Energy
Smart Energy ( ffg Projektförderung 845749 )
Competence deepening for new services by more efficient use smart (intelligent) net.
Smart Energy = Smart Grid & Smart Home - efficient automated use of energy resources
Selfmanaged electricity grids - integration of remote accessible meters (Smart Meter), distributed energy resources (DER) and adjustable consumption in the energy management - in all scales.
The Smart Grid architecture adds distributed components to integrate thousands of sensors and actuators in existing grids and their management. The far more detailed information and more granular control options in comparison to legacy systems enables new ways to optimize grid efficiency and utilization. Excess energy can be better detected and handled, involving distributed production and consumers.
Distributed control mechanisms with short response times that utilize locally gathered (near real-time) information of the sensors (Smart Meter) and analytic models derived from grid-wide Big-Data analyses enable a better usage of the available energy potentials to the benefit of grid operators, regions, and even humanity as a whole.
The improved utilization (consideration & integration) of distributed energy resources (DER), being small power production systems based on water, biomass, photovoltaic, wind, and so on, as well as adjustable consumers, e.g. heat pumps, heating systems, air-conditioning, and so on, via an autonomous regulation within the lower voltage distribution grids, opens up novel possibilities and business segments.
Concerning Smart Energy, AICO focuses on the communication between actors, i.e., on the transport of information. The reaction quality to divergences in the grid commonly improves with the speed and security of the information received from the sensors (Smart Meters). Not only the utilization of adjustable energy production and consumption is thereby improved, also the grid stability and efficiency are improved because divergences are primarily handled on a regional level (local area) rather than via the wide area transmission grid.
If the same approach is used for the energy distribution within a household, an industry complex, a municipality, and alike, the flow to and from the public energy grid can be controlled, at least partially. Timely flexible loads, for example charging an electro-vehicle over night, can be shifted to times of low energy prices. During the day an energy storage system may be offered as grid stabilisation tool (load when energy is cheap, discharge when energy is scarce), or it can be controlled such that the energy created by photovoltaic sources can always be buffered via discharging the battery in the evening and over night as much as necessary according to the weather forecast for the next day.
Intelligent control, smart algorithms and processes, as well as optimized adaptability and usability, define the core challenges in the realm of customized software solutions.