SmartGrids

The reconfiguration of a power distribution system, by exchanging the functional links between its elements, represents one of the most important procedures to improve the performance in the operation of a distribution system. The optimization through reconfiguration (or optimal reconfiguration) of a power distribution system is not a new problem but still represents a difficult one and is specified in some strategies for smart grids. The paper addresses this problem as a single objective one, where, as main criterion, active power losses have been chosen. There is no unique acceptance regarding which approach (based on heuristics, meta-heuristics, genetic algorithms, etc.) is the most proper to use in order to solve this problem. The most important thing is how the specific knowledge of the problem domain is used and modeled in the implementation. Moreover, the indices which can quantify the quality of a reconfiguration method consist in runtime and the obtained solution and these indices can be confirmed only by experimental results. In order to solve the problem (to search and find the optimal solution) an original genetic algorithm based on connected graphs is proposed. Comparative tests performed on some test systems demonstrated the accuracy and the promptness of the proposed algorithm.

Electricity demand is increasing, as a result of increasing consumers in the electricity market. By growing smart technologies such as smart grid and smart energy management systems, customers were given a chance to actively participate in demand response programs (DRPs), and reduce their electricity bills as a result. This study overviews the DRPs and their practices, along with home energy management systems (HEMS) and load management techniques. The paper provides brief literature on HEMS technologies and challenges. The paper is organized in a way to provide some technical information about DRPs and HEMS to help the reader understand different concepts about the smart grid, and be able to compare the essential concerns about the smart grid. The article includes a brief discussion about DRPs and their importance for the future of energy management systems. It is followed by brief literature about smart grids and HEMS, and a home energy management system strategy is also discussed in detail. The literature shows that storage devices have a huge impact on the efficiency and performance of energy management system strategies.

Non-technical losses (NTL) in a Distribution network are primarily related to deficiencies in the energy metering system, vigilant investigation and monitoring of the distribution network, specifically the metering infrastructure. The expenditure on non-technical loss reduction ventures is much less compared to technical loss reduction projects. The Western Province South 1 of Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), which is engaged in electricity distribution, deployed a series of energy management initiatives from 2013 onwards in order to tackle NTL. Some of the initiatives were conversion of three phase electro-mechanical meters to poly phase programmable meters, introduction of substation metering, distribution substation wise meter testing, meter point rehabilitation, energy auditing for loss pinpointing and implementation of a proper seal management system. Along with these activities continuous pre-implementation and post-implementation performance of the metering system was analysed. Some of the parameters examined were the revenue increase owing to refurbishment of metering points, performance of electromechanical meters in the LV network with age analysis and provincial energy loss. By replacing the available electro-mechanical three phase meters to digital three phase meters, of customers having average consumption above 5000 kWh, the recorded number of electricity units and revenue alike increased by 4.5%. Further the results indicated that the percentage number of faulty energy meters available in a distribution substation varied around 10%-15%. The average reduction of energy loss percentage, associated with energy supplied by a distribution substation was 1%. The study showed continuous monitoring of distribution substation-wise energy losses can be used to identify abnormal behaviours of distribution substations and to pinpoint loss prone LV network segments. Further it was identified that apart from energy loss reduction and cost saving, the process increased the meter end reliability by reducing meter end break downs. Apart from establishing a skilled workforce to sustain these processes, the implementation of Smart metering schemes along with automated metering infrastructure and implementation of comprehensive Customer Information Systems were identified as future prospects vital in this perspective.

Android® forensics have progressed overtime providing vital opportunities as well as existing challenges. As an open source platform, Android provides freedom to developers to make contribution towards the rapid growth of the Android market. On the other hand, users of Android devices might not be familiar with the privacy and security implications of installing mobile application on their cell phones. Users might assume that a device that is password locked protects their personal information, but the devices might preserve the personal information on the devices in ways the end users might not be aware of. This research focuses on one of these applications 'WhatsApp®', a very popular social networking mobile application. This research outlines the ways forensic investigators can extract valuable information from WhatsApp and from similar mobile applications installed on the Android platform. The major focus is the extraction and analysis of the data of the application user from non-volatile external storage and the volatile memory (RAM) of an Android device.

Protection and automation in a smart grid environment often have stringent real-time communication requirements between devices within a substation, as well as between distantly located substations. The Generic Object Oriented Substation Event (GOOSE) protocol has been proposed to achieve this goal as it allows to transfer time-critical information within a few milliseconds. However, the transmission of GOOSE messages is often limited to a small Local Area Network (LAN). An earlier work has proposed to use the fifth generation of mobile networks (5G) as a means to transport GOOSE messages in a large-scale smart grid environment. On the basis of this work, this paper designs and implements a new solution for Ethernet-based GOOSE communication over a virtualized 5G core network that does not require any modification of the existing network protocol stack and thus is much easier to deploy. Our experimental results show that the delay introduced by the core network is in the order of sub milliseconds, while the one-way delay without a real radio access network, and without background traffic, is less than 1 ms. Moreover, these delays can be significantly reduced with a container-based deployment rather than a virtual machine-based one. Assuming a 1-ms delay budget for a 5G radio access network, our evaluation confirms that it is indeed feasible to use 5G for GOOSE transmission in IEC 61850 substation automation systems.

— This paper presents the use of the Geographic information for data management and visualization in a smart city project (SunRise – Smart City), conducted at the Scientific Campus of the University of Lille. The campus stands for a small town with around 25 000 users. It includes 150 buildings and 100 km of urban networks. Arc GIS is used for the management and visualization of data concerning the urban network asset. The operating data of the water and energy networks are collected using smart sensors. Interactive data visualization is integrated in Arc GIS using web application. It allows to visualize the operating data. The paper describes the project SunRise Smart City and shows how GIS could be used for the management and visualization of the asset and operating data of a Smart City project.

—Recent advances in intelligent water meter technology have improved the quantitative monitoring in water supply and distribution. Smart meters using Automated Meter Reading (AMR) technology allowed water utilities to: i) provide clear consumption patterns which can help customers to track and control their water usage and ii) improve active leakage targeting and leak detection capability. This paper presents a feedback about the use of AMR system to detect leakage in a large-scale demonstration site, which is conducted at the Scientific Campus of the University of Lille, which is representative to a small town. This paper presents the demonstration site as well as its monitoring using AMR and how the recorded data allowed a rapid detection of water leakage in the campus. Keywords—water; automated meter reading; leakage detection; balance; minimum night flow

Free to download eBook on Practical Solar Tracking Design, following the sun solar tracking system, sun tracking system, sun tracker system, solar tracker system, sun positioning system, and sun path tracking with follow the sun position calculation (azimuth, elevation, zenith), sun trajectory, sun following system, sunrise tracking, sunset tracking, sunlight-phases, dawn, dusk, moon-phase, twilight, moonrise, moonset calculator. Solar Tracking is a key Technology to unlock the full potential of RE in RES.
In harnessing power from the sun through a solar tracker or solar tracking system and following the sun, renewable energy system developers require automatic solar tracking software and solar position algorithms. As a result of the apparent motion of the sun, a sun path on-axis sun tracking system such as the altitude-azimuth dual axis or multi-axis solar tracker systems use a sun tracking algorithm or ray tracing sensors or software to ensure the sun's passage through the sky is traced with high precision in automated solar tracker applications, right through summer solstice, solar equinox and winter solstice using sun positional astronomy.

In general, this book may benefit solar research, sun surveying, sun position applet, solar energy harvesting, solar energy tracker and sun tracking solar panel applications in countries such as Africa, Mediterranean, Italy, Spain, Greece, USA, Mexico, South America, Brazilia, Argentina, Chili, India, Malaysia, Middle East, UAE, Russia, Japan and China. This book on practical automatic Solar-Tracking Sun-Tracking is in .PDF format and can easily be converted to the solar tracking system sun tracking system .EPUB .MOBI .AZW .ePub .FB2 .LIT .LRF .MOBI .PDB .PDF .TCR formats for smartphones and Kindle by using the ebook.online-convert.com facility.

From sun tracing software perspective, the sonnet Tracing The Sun has a literal meaning. Within the context of sun track and trace, this book explains that the sun's daily path across the sky is directed by relatively simple principles, and if grasped/understood, then it is relatively easy to trace the sun with sun following software. Sun Surveyor and Sun Position computer software for tracing the sun are available as open source code, sources that is listed in this book. This book also describes the use of satellite tracking software and mechanisms in solar tracking applications using Sun Microsystems and other processor architecture.
Using solar equations in an electronic circuit for solar tracking is quite simple, even if you are a novice, but mathematical solar equations are over complicated by academic experts and professors in text-books, journal articles and internet websites. In terms of solar hobbies, scholars, students and Hobbyist's looking at solar tracking electronics or PC programs for solar tracking are usually overcome by the sheer volume of scientific material and internet resources, which leaves many developers in frustration when search for simple experimental solar tracking source-code for their on-axis sun-tracking systems. This booklet will simplify the search for the mystical sun tracking formulas for your sun tracker innovation and help you develop your own autonomous solar tracking controller.

By directing the solar collector directly into the sun, a solar harvesting means or device can harness sunlight or thermal heat. This is achieved with the help of sun angle formulas, solar angle formulas or solar tracking procedures for the calculation of sun's position in the sky. Automatic sun tracking system software includes algorithms for solar altitude azimuth angle calculations required in following the sun across the sky. In using the longitude, latitude GPS coordinates of the solar tracker location, these sun tracking software tools supports precision solar tracking by determining the solar altitude-azimuth coordinates for the sun trajectory in altitude-azimuth tracking at the tracker location, using certain sun angle formulas in sun vector calculations. Instead of follow the sun software, a sun tracking sensor such as a sun sensor or camera with vision based sun following image processing software can also be used to determine the position of the sun optically. Such optical feedback devices are commonly used in solar panel tracking systems and dish tracking systems.

Dynamic sun tracing is also used in solar surveying and sun surveying systems that build solar radiance, irradiance and DNI models for GIS (geographical information system) and database systems. In such solar resource modelling systems, a pyranometer or solarimeter is used in addition to measure direct and indirect, scattered, dispersed, reflective radiation for a particular geographical location. Sunlight analysis is important in flash photography where photographic lighting are important for photographers. GIS systems are used by architects who add sun shadow applets to study architectural shading or sun shadow analysis, solar flux calculations, optical modelling or to perform weather modelling. Such systems often employ a computer operated telescope type mechanism with ray tracing program software as a solar navigator or sun tracer that determines the solar position and intensity.

Many open-source sun following and tracking algorithms and source-code for solar tracking programs and modules are freely available to download on the internet today. The purpose of this booklet is to assist developers to track and trace suitable source-code and solar tracking algorithms for their application, whether a hobbyist, scientist, technician or engineer. The solar library used by solar position calculators, solar simulation software and solar contour calculators include machine program code for the solar hardware controller which are software programmed into Micro-controllers, Programmable Logic Controllers PLC, programmable gate arrays, Arduino processor or PIC processor. PC based solar tracking is also high in demand using C++, Visual Basic VB, as well as Windows and Mac based software for sun path tables on Matlab, Excel. Some books and internet webpages use other terms, such as: sun angle calculator, sun position calculator or solar angle calculator. As said, such software code calculate the solar azimuth angle, solar altitude angle, solar elevation angle or the solar Zenith angle (Zenith solar angle is simply referenced from vertical plane, the mirror of the elevation angle measured from the horizontal or ground plane level). Similar software code is also used in solar calculator apps or the solar power calculator apps for IOS and Android smartphone devices. Most of these smartphone solar mobile apps show the sun path and sun-angles for any location and date over a 24 hour period. Some smartphones include augmented reality features in which you can physically see and look at the solar path through your cell phone camera or mobile phone camera at your phone's specific GPS location.

Software algorithms predicting position of the sun in the sky are commonly available as Java applets, C++ code, Basic, GBasic and QBasic code, Matlab and Simulink procedures, TRNSYS simulations, Scada system apps, Labview module, mobile and iphone apps, tablet apps, and so forth. At the same time, PLC software code for a range of sun tracking automation technology (mechatronic, electrical, pneumatic, hydraulic drives and motors) can follow the profile of sun in sky for Siemens, HP, Panasonic, ABB, Allan Bradley, OMRON, SEW, Festo, Beckhoff, Rockwell, Schneider, Yokonawa, or Muthibishi platforms. Sun path projection software are also available for a range of processors, including Siemens S7-1200 or Siemens Logo, OMRON PLC, Ercam PLC, AC500plc ABB, National Instruments, PIC processor, Arduino, and so forth. Analogue or digital interfacing ports on these processors allow for tracking orientation angle feedback through one or a combination of angle sensor or angle encoder, shaft encoder, precision encoder, optical encoder, magnetic encoder, direction encoder, rotational encoder, tilt sensor, inclination sensor, or pitch sensor. Note that the tracker's elevation or zenith axis angle may measured with an altitude angle, declination angle, inclination angle, pitch angle, or vertical angle, zenith axis. Similarly the tracker's azimuth axis angle be measured with a azimuth angle sensor, horizontal angle, roll angle sensor.

Many solar tracker applications cover a wide spectrum of solar energy and concentrated solar devices, including solar power generation, solar desalination, solar water purification, solar steam generation, solar electricity generation, solar industrial process heat, solar thermal heat storage, solar food dryers, hydrogen production from methane or producing hydrogen and oxygen from water (HHO). Many patented or non-patented solar apparatus include tracking in solar apparatus for solar electric generator, solar desalinator, solar steam engine, solar ice maker, solar water purifier, solar cooling, solar refrigeration, USB solar charger, solar phone charging, portable solar charging tracker, solar cooking or solar dying means. Your project may be the next breakthrough or patent, but your invention is held back by frustration in search for the sun tracker you require for your solar powered appliance, solar generator, solar tracker robot, solar freezer, solar cooker, solar drier, solar freezer, or solar dryer project. Whether your solar electronic circuit diagram include a simplified solar controller design in a solar electricity project, solar power kit, solar hobby kit, solar steam generator, solar hot water system, solar ice maker, solar desalinator, hobbyist solar panels, hobby robot, or if you are developing professional or hobby electronics for a solar utility or micro scale solar powerplant for your own solar farm or solar farming, this publication may help accelerate the development of your solar tracking innovation.

Prinsloo, G.J., Dobson, R.T. (2015). Solar Tracking: High precision solar position algorithms, programs, software and source-code for computing the solar vector, solar coordinates & sun angles in Microprocessor, PLC, Arduino, PIC and PC-based sun tracking devices or dynamic sun following hardware. Stellenbosch: SolarBooks. ISBN 978-0-620-61576-1, p 1-542.
Using solar equations in an electronic circuit for solar tracking is quite simple, even if you are a novice, but mathematical solar equations are over complicated by academic experts and professors in text-books, journal articles and internet websites. In terms of solar hobbies, scholars, students and Hobbyist's looking at solar tracking electronics or PC programs for solar tracking are usually overcome by the sheer volume of scientific material and internet resources, which leaves many developers in frustration when search for simple experimental solar tracking source-code for their on-axis sun-tracking systems. This booklet will simplify the search for the mystical sun tracking formulas for your sun tracker innovation and help you develop your own autonomous solar tracking controller.

By directing the solar collector directly into the sun, a solar harvesting means or device can harness sunlight or thermal heat. This is achieved with the help of sun angle formulas, solar angle formulas or solar tracking procedures for the calculation of sun's position in the sky. Automatic sun tracking system software includes algorithms for solar altitude azimuth angle calculations required in following the sun across the sky. In using the longitude, latitude GPS coordinates of the solar tracker location, these sun tracking software tools supports precision solar tracking by determining the solar altitude-azimuth coordinates for the sun trajectory in altitude-azimuth tracking at the tracker location, using certain sun angle formulas in sun vector calculations. Instead of follow the sun software, a sun tracking sensor such as a sun sensor or webcam or video camera with vision based sun following image processing software can also be used to determine the position of the sun optically. Such optical feedback devices are often used in solar panel tracking systems and dish tracking systems.

Dynamic sun tracing is also used in solar surveying, DNI analyser and sun surveying systems that build solar infographics maps with solar radiance, irradiance and DNI models for GIS (geographical information system). In this way geospatial methods on solar/environment interaction makes use use of geospatial technologies (GIS, Remote Sensing, and Cartography).
Climatic data and weather station or weather center data, as well as queries from sky servers and solar resource database systems (i.e. on DB2, Sybase, Oracle, SQL, MySQL) may also be associated with solar GIS maps. In such solar resource modelling systems, a pyranometer or solarimeter is normally used in addition to measure direct and indirect, scattered, dispersed, reflective radiation for a particular geographical location. Sunlight analysis is important in flash photography where photographic lighting are important for photographers. GIS systems are used by architects who add sun shadow applets to study architectural shading or sun shadow analysis, solar flux calculations, optical modelling or to perform weather modelling. Such systems often employ a computer operated telescope type mechanism with ray tracing program software as a solar navigator or sun tracer that determines the solar position and intensity.

The purpose of this booklet is to assist developers to track and trace suitable source-code and solar tracking algorithms for their application, whether a hobbyist, scientist, technician or engineer. Many open-source sun following and tracking algorithms and source-code for solar tracking programs and modules are freely available to download on the internet today. Certain proprietary solar tracker kits and solar tracking controllers include a software development kit SDK for its application programming interface API attributes (Pebble). Widget libraries, widget toolkits, GUI toolkit and UX libraries with graphical control elements are also available to construct the graphical user interface (GUI) for your solar tracking or solar power monitoring program.

Pedagogy has been defined as the discipline that deals with theoretical concepts and practical educational approaches. A smart pedagogy for digital transformation, where artificial intelligence will provide smart educational agents, needs to consider how technologies affect perceptions of reality, cognition, and social interactions. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, several international organizations, including the OECD and UNESCO, are converging on natural learning principles for a new pedagogy focused on achieving the United Nations goals for sustainable development. At the same time, notions about learning space have evolved due to the input of specialists from many disciplines. Even the term “space” has been redefined, with the advent of personal computers and mobile devices as elements that offer a window to the world. Educators today are facing a major paradigm shift, in the form of the fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0, that requires a rapid response through Information 4.0. New technologies and infrastructures enable learning to be personalized to each individual learner. Technological objects metamorphose from tools or environments into personified agents that help teachers evaluate the potential and progress of each learner and might eventually decide for them. Future challenges demand a humanistic approach to technological development in education.

The heated 5G network deployment race has already begun with the rapid progress in standardization efforts, backed by the current market availability of 5G-enabled network equipment, ongoing 5G spectrum auctions, early launching of non-standalone 5G network services in a few countries, among others. In this paper, we study current and future wireless networks from the viewpoint of energy efficiency (EE) and sustainability to meet the planned network and service evolution toward, along, and beyond 5G, as also inspired by the findings of the EU Celtic-Plus SooGREEN Project. We highlight the opportunities seized by the project efforts to enable and enrich this green nature of the network as compared to existing technologies. In specific, we present innovative means proposed in SooGREEN to monitor and evaluate EE in 5G networks and beyond. Further solutions are presented to reduce energy consumption and carbon footprint in the different network segments. The latter spans proposed virtualized/cloud architectures, efficient polar coding for fronthauling, mobile network powering via renewable energy and smart grid integration, passive cooling, smart sleeping modes in indoor systems, among others. Finally, we shed light on the open opportunities yet to be investigated and leveraged in future developments.

—This paper presents the design, realization and use of an innovative system for social housing monitoring. The specifications of the system were determined through concertation with social housing tenants as well as technical and administrative staffs of the social housing manager. The system aims at monitoring the fluids consumption as well as indoor comfort parameters using robust, wireless, low-energy consumption, low-cost and friendly interface system. The paper presents this system and its use in a demonstration apartment of social housing.

This paper presents an optimal and robust nonlinear control scheme to achieve trajectory tracking for disturbed nonlinear systems, which is applied for the control of power converters in DC microgrids. The state-feedback optimal controller synthesis is based on the solution of the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation, which considers the minimization of a cost functional (performance index), resulting in an efficient control strategy. The proposed methodology is used to efficiently regulate the power flow from renewable resources into the utility grid, to supply energy to loads, and to storage energy. Simulation results are presented to assess the performance of the proposed controller for a case study DC microgrid, where its adequate operation depends on the DC bus voltage regulation; hence, for guaranteeing such voltage regulation through the converter (inverter) connected to the utility grid, the optimal control scheme is in addition combined with a super-twisting controller (a robust sliding mode-based control technique) to enhance the inverter control strategy robustness.

Energy management systems are designed to monitor, optimize, and control the smart grid energy market. Demand-side management, considered as an essential part of the energy management system, can enable utility market operators to make better management decisions for energy trading between consumers and the operator. In this system, a priori knowledge about the energy load pattern can help reshape the load and cut the energy demand curve, thus allowing a better management and distribution of the energy in smart grid energy systems. Designing a computationally intelligent load forecasting (ILF) system is often a primary goal of energy demand management. This study explores the state of the art of computationally intelligent (i.e., machine learning) methods that are applied in load forecasting in terms of their classification and evaluation for sustainable operation of the overall energy management system. More than 50 research papers related to the subject identified in existing literature are classified into two categories: namely the single and the hybrid computational intelligence (CI)-based load forecasting technique. The advantages and disadvantages of each individual techniques also discussed to encapsulate them into the perspective into the energy management research. The identified methods have been further investigated by a qualitative analysis based on the accuracy of the prediction, which confirms the dominance of hybrid forecasting methods, which are often applied as metaheurstic algorithms considering the different optimization techniques over single model approaches. Based on extensive surveys, the review paper predicts a continuous future expansion of such literature on different CI approaches and their optimizations with both heuristic and metaheuristic methods used for energy load forecasting and their potential utilization in real-time smart energy management grids to address future challenges in energy demand management.

This ETIP SNET Vision 2050 is the basis for defining
the specifications for further research and innovation
needs in the transition from today towards Europe’s
energy systems of the future. Its purpose is to inspire
readers, to let them discover the RD&I challenges associated
with a 2050 low-carbon, fully-integrated, and
circular pan-European energy system with the electricity
system as its backbone.

—The Distributed Network Protocol v3.0 (DNP3) is one of the most widely used protocols for smart grid communications. Security challenges which could cause great scale of damages to critical infrastructure like the smart grid have emerged in recent years. This paper investigates the attacks that target smart grids which utilize the DNP3 protocol, and how these attacks can be detected using the deterministic version of the Dendritic Cell Algorithm (DCA) which is an Artificial Immune System (AIS)-based algorithm. To evaluate DCAs effectiveness, we generated a testing dataset, by implementing various attacks then executing them in a DNP3 smart grid environment. We present our results, showing that these attacks can be successfully detected using an architecture based on the DCA.