UCLA Smart Grid Energy Research Center (SMERC) and Wireless Internet for the Mobile Enterprise Consortium (WINMEC) announce the
Fifth UCLA Smart Grid Thought Leadership Forum
Innovative Technologies for Demonstrations
November 2, 2010
http://winmec.ucla.edu/smartgrid/2010/
SPEAKERS - We are currently accepting speaker nominations : Nominate a Speaker.
Current Speakers
| Edoardo Calia | Research Director | ISMB - Istituto Superiore Mario Boella |
| Bob Frazier | Director of Technology | Houston Electric |
| Rajit Gadh | Professor & Director | UCLA - WINMEC & Smart Grid Energy Research Center |
| John Sasson | Director, Land Management Solutions | Accela, Inc. |
| Kat Shoa | Founder / Principal | Kat Shoa Consulting |
| Gary Sorkin | Marketing Director | USNAP Alliance |
| Kay Stefferud | Principal Consultant | EnerNex |
PARTICIPANTS - At the Fifth UCLA Smart Grid Thought Leadership Forum, we will be joined by several leaders from government, utilities, suppliers, and academia.
Sponsor the forum - Limited sponsorship opportunities are available - for further information please contact : sponsor@winmec.ucla.edu
Join UCLA Smart Grid Energy Research Center or SMERC (http://smartgrid.ucla.edu/) and UCLA WINMEC (http://winmec.ucla.edu/) for its fifth Smart Grid Leadership Forum. On November 2, 2010, this thought leadership forum will focus on research, technology development and demonstrations planned for the Electrical Power Grid in the United States and its modernization opportunity and accompanying innovations over the next decade into what is being now called the Smart Grid.
OPPORTUNITY - The Electric Utility Grid is approximately a hundred years old. The grid architecture is generally hierarchical with a small number of energy generation sources and a large number of energy demand sources. The electric grid was not primarily meant to incorporate stochastic and small renewable energy sources such as solar energy from residential rooftops, nor was it originally designed to integrate automated demand response or smart and digitally controlled appliances or smart chargers powering electric cars into the grid. Today, however, with the Obama administration having provided a major impetus to the tune of $3.4 billion for modernization of the US electric grid, we have an unprecedented opportunity to redefine, architect and create this Smart Grid. This investment, coupled with cost share from recipients and their partners, would be used to develop research, technology, innovation, modern infrastructure, training, customer education, and other activities to further the modernization of the grid. Advanced metering infrastructure, EV integration, Renewable energy developments such as Solar, and, Wind, and, community energy storage, are among the advanced technology demonstrations that the administration has planned with the current funding.
WHAT IS SMART GRID? With such a major amount of funding in the U.S. some experts argue that the "Smart Grid" of the future 25 years hence would look quite different from the current grid. As a nation, before we start to implement the Smart Grid, we must have a vision of the Future Smart Grid. Our vision must include an architecture. The "Smart" in "Smart Grid" must be understood so that it can be modeled, implemented and tested. Questions being raised include whether the "Smart" model is similar to that of a Smart Phone with its apps and personalization capability, or the Internet with its self healing capability, or even perhaps like us humans? For starters, we know that a Smart System is a closed loop system, incorporating concepts such as sense-and-control, communication, information gathering, inferencing, interpolating and extrapolating, having strategy, and performing deep analysis. We also know that smart systems have the ability make decisions, to store information, to learn by experience, and, to self-adapt, self-organize and self-heal. Moreover since we are dealing with energy as the essential entity that is being manipulated, its generation, movement, monitoring, storage, control, consumption, reuse, routing, etc., are important requirements within this intelligent framework.
INNOVATION VIA TECHNOLOGY- The overwhelming excitement today in the energy transmission and distribution sectors is the innovation that can result from the investment and modernization of the grid creating a fundamentally new cyber-infrastructure. Other industries such as the mobile phone industry, telecommunications industry, computer industry and the music industry, have gone through a considerable and often unexpected technological and consumer change in the last 25 years. Twenty five years from now, the Electrical Power grid is expected to look very different, and a key question that is being raised is what type of innovative evolution will it follow - the iPhone from the mobile industry, or, Google from the Internet, or, perhaps an entirely new model? Also, what other entirely new innovations will it create or will it absorb some of the innovations from emerging sectors such as ZIgbee or RF-sensors from the wireless industry?
BENEFITS TO CONSUMERS - Irrespective of which model is followed or innovated, it is a certainty that customer choice will be key to drive the direction of the Smart Grid. I.e. the grid will become smart as a result of the combination of technologies adopted in the context of the consumer. Incremental benefits and low hanging fruit, if identified, would help convince the customer who is also the taxpayer paying for this development. The customer must understand the benefits, and this would be possible through demonstrations targeted in the first round of the investment stimulus ARRA grants.
BENEFITS TO UTILITIES - Utilities would benefit as a result of the Investment via Innovation and Infrastructure, resulting in the ability of their customers to participate via Demand Response. If their customer can respond to changes in price, demand response signal requesting for load shedding, etc., the end result is a giant automated smart control loop, which starts to form the beginning of the Smart Grid of the future. Utilities would also be able to better balance the grid, and provide smart demand dispatch thereby reducing frequency and voltage instabilities.
BENEFITS TO SOCIETY - Society at large must benefit not only from the perspective of the ratepayer's and taxpayer's investment, but also from a betterment of citizens' lives. First, integration of renewable energy sources should result in greener sources of power thereby potentially reducing greenhouse gase (GHG) emissions. The Smart Grid would reduce energy losses at various levels not only in transmission and distribution but also at the consumer level by integrating smart sensors in buildings, factories and homes thereby refining the power flow control, reducing waste and increasing efficiency, improved electricity routing and energy planning. The grid by being flexible as a result would reduce outages as well as localizing or curtailing instabilities in the grid and mitigating large-scale outages.
ROLE OF PUBLIC POLICY AND PRICING - The success of incentives to consumers such as demand response would depend upon the flexibility that the utilities have in pricing their product much like a retailer can influence sales by marking prices of products up or down. The future of energy pricing would almost certainly be more complex than flat pricing - and a balance would be reached by the customers providing their input via regulators, and public policy.
TIMELINE FOR IMPLEMENTATION - The innovation, investment and infrastructure could potentially have a 25 year cycle, with the first five years being regional demonstrations. The early demonstrations will shed light on the viability of the various technologies and would in turn result in the first phase of the deployments such as smart meters, automated demand response, and, EVs.
TOPICS (include but not limited to):
- Stimulus ARRA investment - first round of funded projects, planned developments across the nation
- Advanced Smart Grid Technologies - Communications, Sensors, Controls, Wireless, Mobile, Power Systems, Power Electronics
- Automated Demand Response - Integration of Consumer's electricity infrastructure with utility's infrastructure
- AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) - Automation at various levels including billing and monitoring, Smart Meter Integration
- Electric Vehicles - Integration of EV and Battery Technology into the grid of the future, charge/discharge, back-fill planning, V2G, G2V
- Smart Appliance Integration - Communications interfaces, data formats, sense-control infrastructure
- Customer and consumer response - Integrating customer response while developing the Smart Grid
- Transmission Integration - Bringing Transmission and Distribution Together, Phasor Measurement Units (PMU), Power Quality
- Solar Integration - Solar PVC Integration, Solar Technologies, Variability of source
- Wind Integration - Micro- versus Marco- Wind Mill Technology, Urban versus rural technology
- Energy Storage Integration - Battery, Hydro, Mechanical Fly-wheel energy storage
- Renewable energy - Energy source integration models
- Business Issues - ROI of Smart Grid investment technologies, determining low hanging fruit, measuring benefits
- Modeling and architecture - Hierarchical versus P2P models, Information models, data models, Internet/Wireless Models, RF-sensor models.
- Scaling up - What needs to get done to have a Scalable Infrastructure
- Cyber-infrastructure and Cyber-security - Communications/data/app security, embedded device security, intrusion detection/prevention, layers of security, security policy
- Visions of Smart Grid - From DOE, National Labs, Industry, Utilities, Government
- Open-systems wireless and communications interface software and standards based approach for the Smart Grid of the Future
- User interfaces - Use of personal mobile device as a tool for interaction with the home electrical control systems
- Security of information technology that is being applied to the grid (including wireless, wire-line, broadband over power lines).
- Standards - at what stage should a given technology be standardized, what should be standardized, and who should be allowed to standardize? Open systems versus open-source
- California Bill AB 32 and its impact on the Smart Grid
What is UCLA WINSmartGridTM UCLA WINSmartGrid™ is a research technology platform developed at UCLA whose objective is to advance novel Wireless / Communications Sense-and-control Smart Grid technologies, perform testing in the labs, transition technologies into the field for scaled testing, and work with partners in industry and government for demonstrations and eventual rollout. Examples of research activities in this program include:
- Demand Response via monitoring of in-building, in-office and in-home infrastructure and its integration into the Smart Grid
- Electric Vehicle energy monitoring, charge/discharge, back-fill planning, scheduling, and integration with enterprise-grade wireless sense-and-control technology
- Cyber-security architecture for AMI, DR and EV communications and sense-control models
- Communications architecture for Integration of Energy storage
- Minimal delay wireless networks connecting to monitoring infrastructure, and, use of personal mobile device to connect to the wireless infrastructur
- Wireless monitoring condition of remote underground power lines and conductor temperature
- Distributed computing model for Smart Grid using cloud computing
Registration
To register to attend - http://winmec.ucla.edu/smartgrid/2010-11/registration.asp
Speakers from previous events:
| Andres Carvallo | Chief Information Officer | Austin Energy |
| Dave Chassin | Staff Scientist | PNNL |
| Vikram Budhraja | President | Electric Power Group |
| Luke Clemente | General Manager, Metering & Sensing Systems | GE Energy - Digital Energy |
| Kshamit Dixit | Director of IT Security | Toronto Hydro |
| Rajit Gadh | Director | UCLA WINMEC |
| Livio Gallo | Chief Executive Officer | Enel Distribuzione |
| Mike Gravely | Manager - Energy Systems Research Office | California Energy Commission |
| Erich Gunther | Chairman and CTO | EnerNex Corporation |
| Aloke Gupta | Energy Analyst | California Public Utilities Commission |
| Joel Ibarbia | Senior Consulting Engineer - SmartMeter | PG&E SmartMeter Engineering and Planning |
| Erfan Ibrahim | Technical Executive | EPRI |
| Doug Kim | Director, Advanced Technology | Southern California Edison |
| Lee Krevat | Director - Smart Grid | San Diego Gas & Electric |
| Jayant Kumar | Director, Strategy & Partnership | AREVA T&D Inc |
| Matthew Lampe | Chief Information Officer | Los Angeles Department of Water and Power |
| Mark McGranaghan | VP | EPRI |
| Michael Montoya | Director Engineering Advancement | Southern California Edison |
| John Nelson | Chief, Electricity & Renewables | Defense Energy Support Center |
| Scott Pugh | Science & Technology Directorate | Department of Homeland Security |
| Ted Reguly | Director - Smart Meter Program Office | San Diego Gas and Electric |
| Commissioner Timothy Simon | Commissioner | California Public Utilities Commission |
| Weston Sylvester | Director Distribution Solutions/Smart Grid | Siemens Energy, Inc. |
| Malcolm Unsworth | President & CEO | Itron, Inc. |
| David Watson | Program Manager | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory |
| David Wollman | Manager, Electrical Metrology Groups | NIST |
See our Previous Events:
2010-05-17: UCLA WINSmartGridTM Connection
2009-11-04: UCLA WINSmartGridTM Connection
2009-06-18: WinSmartGridTM Thought Leadership Round Table Forum
2009-03-18: WinSmartGridTM Connection kickoff meeting
Participating in UCLA WINSmartGridTM Connection
Organizations interested in joining the UCLA Wireless SmartGrid Connection should email smartgrid@winmec.ucla.edu
Smart Grid Technology Leadership Council
Select organizations are participating on The UCLA-WINMEC Smart Grid Technology Leadership Council (http://winmec.ucla.edu/advisory-smartgrid.asp). For further information, email smartgrid@winmec.ucla.edu, subject "Smart Grid Technology Leadership Council".
Sponsors:
WINMEC,
Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science,
SMERC,
Clean Tech Los Angeles
Hughes Network Systems,
ISMB,
InterDigital Communications,
Motorola Inc.,
QUALCOMM,
Raytheon,
Symbol Technologies,
Tescom Co.
Equipment Sponsors:
Impinj,
RSI ID Technologies,
Printronix,
Symbol,
Maxell,
Motorola Inc.,
Zebra,
Quantum Route, Inc.,
Convergence Systems Limited,
Magellan Technology (Australia),
Confidex,
Alien Technology,
Intemec,
UPM Raflatac,
TagSense,
Albis Technologies,
Metalcraft Inc.,
Roxtron,
Invengo
UCLA - WINMEC, 44-116S Engr. IV, 420 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA. 90095