Date: 16 October 2015
Virtual-Strategy.com

At the Cyber Security Summit on Oct. 20-21, the event's producers will present the Summit's first "Visionary Leader Award" to IEEE Smart Grid Chair Dr. Massoud Amin. To honor and support Dr. Amin's role in conceiving the Summit and taking its mission to the next level, the award recognizes his extremely important role in moving cyber security into the spotlight. Today, the threat of cyberattacks and hacking are a major threat to every corner of a country's infrastructure, physical and digital. Congratulations to Dr. Amin for this deserving recognition.

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Date: October 2015
IEEE IoT Portal

In an edition of IEEE Talks IoT, Steve Collier--Director, Smart Grid Strategies, at Milsoft Utility Solutions and is an IEEE Smart Grid expert--offers his insights on how smart grid and the Internet of Things (IoT) and how the Internet and IoT are essential to the success and security of a smart grid. He also provides some essential insight into how these technologies interconnect and interrelate. "The IoT has achieved true integration, seamless interoperability, limitless scalability, and convenient upgradeability. There’s really no better or even equally good way to do it," said Collier.

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Date: 29 September 2015
SmartGridNews.com

IEEE is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the WiFi standard, IEEE 802.11. In this article, SmartGridNews.com interviewed Tim Godfrey, chair of the IEEE 802.24 Technical Advisory Group, who began working with the IEEE 802.11 standard in 1994. Godfrey offers his insights on the importance of standards and how the WiFi standard affects smart grid technology. "...several systems are marketed for smart grid and smart city types of networks that can build a mesh based on IEEE 802.11," said Godfrey.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) release of the Quadrennial Technology Review (QTR) was held September 10, 2015 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The QTR 2015 builds upon the first QTR in 2011 focusing on the role of technology in the energy sector.

The first QTR defined a framework for understanding and discussing energy system challenges, established a set of priorities for the Department, and explained to stakeholders the roles of DOE and the national laboratories, the broader government, the private sector, academia, and innovation in energy transformation.

The 2015 QTR describes the current energy landscape, the potential for improvement in systems and technologies, and a wide-ranging set of related research, development, demonstration, and deployment opportunities.

The QTR 2015 also complements the work of the Quadrennial Energy Review (QER), which examined the energy infrastructure and government-wide energy policy. The report was in response to an initiative created by President Obama via a Presidential Memorandum wherein he directed several U.S. Federal agencies to report their findings to DOE’s identified priority areas. As part of the final report, the IEEE Task Force provided feedback to the DOE which incorporated the IEEE comments including further detail to the specific priority issues outlined by the DOE and added an executive summary along with a set of presentation slides. Access the full version of the final QER report submitted by the IEEE Joint Task Force and the presentations highlighting the report’s six core topics.

Four overarching themes emerged from the QTR and associated technology assessments:

  • The convergence of energy systems across sectors
  • Diversification within energy supplies and services
  • Confluence of R&D, computational tools, and analysis of complex systems
  • Energy efficiency

To read the QTR 2015 in full and for more information:

IEEE Smart Grid proudly launches its new portal (smartgrid.ieee.org) with an interactive IEEE Smart Grid Domains & Subdomains framework and with more advanced and user-friendly search features.

Some of the new features include:

  • A state-of-the-art all-inclusive and interactive IEEE-search tool of the IEEE Smart Grid Domains & Sub-domains. To activate its features, click on the "Domains" tab, select an IEEE Smart Grid Domain that activates a drop-down menu of IEEE Smart Grid Sub-Domains. Upon selecting a Sub-domain, visitors are prompted to content results related to the selected Sub-domain from three search engines including the IEEE Smart Grid portal, all IEEE websites and IEEE Xplore.
  • An "Announcements" section on the homepage will serve as a tool for the latest and most up to date information regarding IEEE Smart Grid.
  • Logos of the 14 Partner Societies of IEEE Smart Grid with a url link to their respective websites.
  • An enhanced "About IEEE Smart Grid" page with the Initiative’s Mission, Vision, Objectives, snapshot of its global community, descriptions of committees, and names of leadership and staff.
  • A consolidated list of all Smart Grid related future events, conferences and webinars across IEEE in the "Events" tab.
  • A consolidated list of all IEEE Smart Grid related resources in the "Resources" tab, including news, webinars, research, standards, interviews, policy and more!

For comments, feedback or suggestions, please contact Project Manager Angelique Rajski-Parashis at a.rajski@ieee.org.

Date: 11 August 2015
ECNMag.com

The 2015 IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting (GM) in Denver on July 26-30 was a great success. This IEEE-USA InSight article is an excellent wrap-up of all the activities at the event, including some interesting observations on the clean energy future and how policy will shape the grid. Of course, renewables are top of mind in the industry today—with GM sessions and panels citing several important stats. For example, Canada receives 65 percent of its electricity from renewables. Of course, that only scratches the surface. However, EPRI’s Mark McGranaghan believes that today’s energy engineers are “on the precipice of an energy revolution.” He explained: “We have data analytics. We have customer behavior. We have communications. We have power electronics. Almost every IEEE society is supporting the Smart Grid initiative, because it really is a cross-cutting thing.”

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Date: 16 September 2015

Written by Victoria Catterson and James Pilgrim

Smart grid technologies are changing the way we utilize high voltage assets, with a consequential effect on asset management practices and maintenance planning. At the same time, smart grid technologies present an opportunity for improvements in asset performance, through better materials, more sensors, and online data processing for monitoring and control. The IEEE Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society (DEIS) addressed this topic through a workshop at the Electrical Insulation Conference in June 2015, held in Seattle, USA.

The major applied research conference of the IEEE DEIS is the annual Electrical Insulation Conference. The day before the conference in June 2015, a full day workshop was run on The Impact of Smart Grid Technologies on Plant Health, with seven speakers on diverse topics under this theme. The workshop was attended by a mixture of graduate students and active researchers, and a panel discussion identified further activities where the DEIS Technical Committee on Smart Grids could focus their efforts.

The workshop was chaired by Victoria Catterson from the University of Strathclyde, and covered two broad topics. The first was the potential for the smart grid to bring improved devices, through self healing capabilities, and novel sensing technologies to achieve self managing systems. The second topic was new usage patterns, where the operation and maintenance of traditional assets has to adapt to accommodate changes to load profiles and ratings, and new methods of modelling asset health and deterioration.

Looking first at novel devices, HVDC has a crucial role to play in transporting power over long distances, such as from off-shore wind farms. The monitoring and maintenance of these assets is critical to the cost-effectiveness of the technology. Jerome Castellon of the Université de Montpellier discussed a critical difference between HVDC and AC cable systems as being the accumulation of space charge under the DC field, which can lead to extreme electric field distortions in service, and thus early failure of the cable.

Jerome presented on techniques for measuring space charge developed by his team. Discussion with the audience revealed that as yet there is no method of monitoring the condition of cable accessories, and that this is a massive challenge for currently deployed subsea high voltage cables.

Peter Morshuis of Delft University of Technology introduced the potential for special dielectric materials to harvest power from ocean waves. Energy in the wave is converted to electrical energy through the deformation of an electro-active polymer, a material which changes in size or shape in response to electric field. Some challenges for building a commercial solution include finding a material which can maximise energy density, and how to bond electrodes to such a material.

Kaori Fukunaga from the National Institute of Information and Communication Technology gave a summary of recent work by the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan on electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) issues. The increased number of devices, and particularly power electronics-based devices, associated with smart networks leads to more potential for for inadvertant or malicious interference. The appropriate standards were summarised, and a significant gap identified as being the sub-150kHz bands.

On the second topic area of new ways of utilising existing assets, James Pilgrim from the University of Southampton identified the changing load patterns in distribution networks, and the resultant effects on network assets. Factors such as embedded renewable generation and electrification of transport can lead to bi-directional current flows and generally increased loading, which in turn increases temperatures of transformers and cables, and accelerates their aging. One avenue of research is to improve the models used for asset management, to take account of these new aging effects.

However, automation within the smart grid may also be the solution to this problem. James highlighted the potential for demand side management to be used for peak shaving, which flattens out the load profile and correspondingly reduces the aging effects on assets. In either case, increased levels of condition monitoring would be beneficial, to gain greater visibility of asset health.

Another changing parameter within networks is the level and type of harmonics present. Gian Carlo Montanari from the University of Bologna highlighted the aging effect of non-conventional voltage waveshapes on cables, transformers, and rotating machines. If harmonic data were used as an input to an asset health scoring system, the condition assessment would be more accurate, which would enable better decision-making. A point raised in the discussion was that standard health scoring systems may be too simplistic in the way they combine sub-component health, and further research is needed into the link between monitoring and asset management as a whole.

Brian Sparling from Dynamic Ratings Inc. spotlighted new NERC requirements for generators to report their operational capability every 10 minutes. This essentially requires real time condition assessment for all assets critical to plant functionality, in order to determine normal and emergency ratings for the plant. This can be enabled by condition monitoring, but careful consideration of the visualisation of data is also essential for situational awareness.

The workshop finished with an open discussion of the areas where DEIS should be addressing smart grid topics, and which should be focus areas in the coming months. It was recognised that the society must have good links with others, such as IEEE PES and CIGRE, while avoiding overlap. The topic of smart materials is a natural fit for the DEIS even if not commonly considered as a smart grid topic more generally. One recurrent theme was the need for improved models of asset deterioration, and from that a call for open datasets which would make scientific advances in asset models faster and easier to verify. These ideas will now be taken forward to the DEIS Technical Committee on Smart Grids to plan the next focus activities.

In June 2015, the Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society (DEIS) hosted a workshop on Smart Grid Technologies in Seattle, Washington, USA.

The major applied research conference of the IEEE DEIS is the annual Electrical Insulation Conference. The day before the conference, DEIS hosted a full day workshop on “The Impact of Smart Grid Technologies on Plant Health,” with seven speakers on diverse topics under this theme. The workshop was attended by graduate students and active researchers, and a panel discussion identified further activities where the DEIS Technical Committee on Smart Grids could focus their efforts.

The workshop was chaired by Victoria Catterson from the University of Strathclyde. Professor Catterson covered two broad topics including: (1) the potential for the smart grid to bring improved devices, through self-healing capabilities, and novel sensing technologies to achieve self-managing systems, and (2) new usage patterns, where the operation and maintenance of traditional assets has to adapt to accommodate changes to load profiles and ratings, and new methods of modelling asset health and deterioration.

Other major topics covered during the workshop included:

  • HVDC Cable Systems presented by Jerome Castellon of Université de Montpellier
  • A Smart Grid Approach to Condition Based Maintenance of Energy Assets presented by Gian Carlo Montanari of Universita di Bologna
  • Changing Load Patterns presented by James Pilgrim of the University of Southampton
  • The use of Special Dielectrics in Smart Grid Energy Harvesting Systems presented by Peter Morshuis of Delft University of Technology
  • Electromagnetic Compatibility Issues in the Smart Grid presented by Kaori Fukunaga of the National Institute of Information and Communication Technology
  • Situational Awareness for Generating Units presented by Brian Sparling of Dynamic Ratings Inc.
  • Future Direction Discussion for the DEIS

More information on the workshop may be found here:

smart grid compendium 2015

The IEEE Smart Grid Newsletter Compendium “Smart Grid: The Next Decade is the first of its kind promotional compilation featuring 32 “best of the best” insightful articles from recent issues of the IEEE Smart Grid Newsletter and will be the go-to resource for industry professionals for years to come.

The Compendium also introduces for the first time the IEEE Smart Grid domains and sub-domains created by IEEE Smart Grid members who were inspired by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Conceptual Model. Each of the 32 articles is categorized into its appropriate IEEE Smart Grid sub-domain.

Date: 30 July 2015
Metering International

In this Metering International Q&A with IEEE Smart Grid Chair Dr. Massoud Amin, the evolution of the self-healing grid is examined and discussed. Dr. Amin offers his perspective on how the smart grid is progressing. Among the many developments, the next five years will involve microgrids and how they play a role in meeting demand and increasing reliability.


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