By Benoit Dome / Published on Mon, 2009-05-04 06:41
The peri-urban electrification programme in Sub Sahara Africa will improve the lives of some 15 million households and over 110 million people. It will create energy efficiencies calculated of over 7% of the region’s current electricity consumption, which is the equivalent of over ~7 million Tonnes of CO2 emissions. Per household the energy efficiencies account for some ~40% of the current consumption, including the savings generated by the upstream improvements.
A Smart Grid for Intelligent Energy Use: The Smart Grid involves the use of communications and computing technology to transmit and distribute energy more efficiently. This video describes the smart grid and how it will reduce our carbon footprint through energy efficiency and the integration of renewable sources of energy.
Featuring interviews recorded at the IEEE Plug-In Hybrid Vehicles: Accelerating Innovation Conference (2007) and the IEEE Energy 2030 Conference (2008).
By Hans Nilsson / Published on Mon, 2008-07-21 05:00
Al Gore has challenged his fellow Americans, or rather their future leaders (see footnote), to take on the task of producing 100% of their electricity from renewable and truly clean, carbon-free sources within 10 years. The challenge is deliberately formatted similarly to the one John Kennedy made to put a man on the moon within a decade, but it is also a very political text in the sense that Mr. Gore provides a backdrop describing the failure of the American economy as it looks today.
Tomas Friedman spells out this failure even more clearly in his column in The NY Times, quoting a Texan proverb that he claims is summing up the energy policy of the Bush era: “If all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you ever got.”
Visit the Virtual Energy Forum and listen to interviews with senior energy executives from Marriott, Raytheon, the U.S. Department of Energy, as well as Dick Munson, author of such books as "From Edison to Enron: The Business of Power and What It Means for the Future of Electricity" and "The Power Brokers." The forum also streams keynote addresses from John Kerry, Newt Gingrich, Howard Learner and others.
These interviews have been recorded during a two day online-only event held on Tuesday, June 10th and Wednesday, June 11th, 2008. The event focused on how leading companies can adopt better energy management practices to cut cost, while at the same time adopting clean energy alternatives -- presenting alternative energy technologies, policies, and best practices in a live, interactive environment.
Below is a video recorded at the EPQU (Electrical Power Quality & Utilization) Conference in Barcelona, showing the atmosphere and interest of the conference. The next EPQU Conference will take place in 2009. In the meantime, you can access all the proceedings of the last conference.
By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Wed, 2008-04-09 16:48
Power Quality monitoring has become a standard task in electrical network management. Amir Broshi explains how he noticed through "real life" case studies of Power Quality troubleshooting that solving the Power Quality problem with measurements simply taken to comply with standards is sometimes not possible. He shows that by providing engineers with data beyond the standards, an unprecedented number of Power Quality events can not only be captured, but are definitively solved.
By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Wed, 2008-04-09 16:46
Power Quality cost analysis is always subject to different vision within the same site or company. Amir Broshi explains why such a difference in point of views exists and how they are linked to one's partial vision of a global problem. In conclusion, he offers a tool: a simple checklist to give a complete overview of poor power quality costs impacts for electricity professionals as well as the decision makers, financial and site managers.
By Isabelle Heriakian / Published on Wed, 2008-04-09 16:43
While modern industrial facilities are enjoying huge benefits from the evolution of power electronic devices in terms of productivity, quality, or cost-reduction, their high sensitivity and little ride-through capability to common power quality disturbances result in significant economic losses.
There is still a gap when attempting to apply some of these power quality solutions in high power industrial processes for several reasons (investment, space, long-term energy losses cost, high temperatures or dirtiness, regenerative loads), since most of them were developed for IT industries.
When immunising against disturbances, purchasing cost, return on investment versus saving, maintenance cost, efficiency, size, reliability or availability are the key decision criteria to industrial decision makers.
In order to clearly identify responsibilities for voltage quality disturbances on the point of connection (POC), voltage and current requirements have to be available at the POC. So, the relationship between inrush currents, flicker severity levels and grid impedances in the low voltage grid should be explained.
Furthermore, maximum harmonic currents at the POC in low voltage grids are determined by using these grid impedances.
Bart Franken & Erwin Hoeskma from Kema explain what regulators need to consider in establishing an effective voltage quality regulatory framework for distribution networks. In particular, they consider the regulation of five voltage quality dimensions: short interruptions, voltage dips, flicker, supply voltage variation, and harmonic distortions. Their work assesses the most appropriate regulatory control method and presents practical experiences through a number of case studies.
In this interview, Keiichi Hirose from NTT Facilities, presents the first trial to take place in Japan in the area of power quality concepts and solutions. This field demonstration of a multiple power quality supply system is leaded by NTT Facilities. It has developed and installed a multiple power quality supply system that has the capability to feed four classes of alternative current (AC) and one of direct current (DC) power while meeting various customer requirements. The system also has three types of distributed generator (DG): gas engine sets, fuel cells, and photovoltaic panels.
Zbigniew Hanzelka from AGH University in Krakow presents his research group, the EPQU periodicals (Journal & Magazine) and the Power Quality book as well as future trends in effective utilisation of electrical power.
European utilities have a great impact on liberalisation, globalisation, regulations and environmental issues. Technology and innovation have become the key drivers to offer added value to the final clients and a strategic advantage over competitors. Eduardo Mascarell explains how Endesa is going to enhance a traditional maintenance model based on corrective and preventive tasks, into predictive models where the keyword is "reliability".The aim is to consider the critical tasks and its periodicity to achieve the best performance of the equipment.
Electricity as a commodity should satisfy strict quality requirements. In the last two decades, the customer's urge for good quality of power supply has increased due to the use of more sensitive electronic devices which on the other hand might influence the electricity network too. At present, no definite responsibility with respect to power quality (PQ) aspects at the point of connection (POC) is defined in the European standard EN50160 or other standard. So in this video interview, Sharmistha Bhattacharya explains why voltage quality regulation is needed in today's electricity network.
Luca Lo Schiavo from AEEG (the Italian Regulatory Authority for Electricity and Gas) presents his organization and its major contribution to EU works in this domain in this interview.
He also gives an overview of possible future trends in service quality regulation as well as some examples from Italy and France. He discusses the appeal of a reliability-centred approach as well as a measurement campaign in the context of liberalisation.
Andreas Sumper from CITCEA, The Centre of Technological Innovation in Static Converters and Drives, which belongs to the Politechnical University of Catalonia (UPC) presents this center of research and innovation.
Jonathan Manson presents the results of a survey conducted by the European Copper Institute (ECI) into the consequences for EU industry of poor power quality. These add up to >€150bn annually, are mainly experienced by industry and caused by power interruptions (dips, surges, transients and short interruptions). A call for action is made using the significant and disturbing conclusions drawn from the analysis of the survey.
Fabrice Schorr from Socomec presents his vision of energy-efficiency, power quality and energy storage, and their implications for utility grid frequency stabilization. Energy efficiency is one of the key elements taken into account in datacenters and the industry in general nowadays. The best practices in terms of energy saving can be found on side losses that decrease the global efficiency of quality energy supply.
