“SMART ENERGY Brainstorms”: R&D for the Future of Smart Energy Grids: fostering pilot experiences in Portugal
A series of meetings jointly organized by the CMU Portugal and the MIT Portugal Programs, together with the MOBI.e and INOVGRID Projects
June-December 2010
Background
The debate on smart energy grids is emerging worldwide and is attracting the attention of the industry, researchers and policy makers, from both operational and conceptual points of view.
Smart energy grids may have different meanings for different people. At the level of the customer, this might mean meters that can read automatically, time-of-day and time-of-use meters, meters that communicate with customers or control of customers’ loads. At the level of the distribution system, it might mean the automation of the distribution system, a selective load control, or managing distributed generation and “islanding”. For many the concept is associated with electricity and focused at the level of the transmission system, smart grids might mean measurement of phase and other advanced measurements, FACTS and other advanced control devices or distributed and autonomous control (see Morgan et al., 2009 for more detail).
Over the course of the past two decades, issues of affordability of energy services, security of supply, environmental concerns (including climate change) have pushed Portugal to foster policies to increase the share of renewable energy in the electricity generation mix, promote energy efficiency, consider the electrification of part of the vehicle fleet, and move towards a “smart” electricity grid. Still, today Portugal imports 83% of its energy needs (Eurostat, 2009), has the 5 th most expensive electricity retail price of the EU27 before taxes, moving to 9 th when all taxes are included (Eurostat, 2009).
To address part of these issues, Portugal has recently formulated an ambitious national energy strategy for 2020 (Res.Cons. Ministros nº29/2010), which includes, amongst other strategic areas, the reduction of the energy dependence to 74% and an increase in the share electricity generated from renewable energy sources to 60%, both by 2020. The strategy also proposes to create economic clusters around the production of renewable energy and energy efficiency. These goals will require that Portugal rethinks its energy systems in several fronts, and provides a unique setting for Portugal to pioneer research in the “smart energy” area. This requires bringing together different energy sources and their grids in order to provide an energy service with the best economic, environmental and energy performance, enabling the “co-generations” and the transformation of each citizen in an active and informed actor of the energy system.
We proposed a series of workshops, called “Smart Energy Brainstorms” that will be pursued during 2010. The main goal of the “Smart Energy Brainstorms” is to identify key strategic research areas in the realm of smart energy grids where Portuguese research groups and companies may join efforts with leading partners worldwide and promote Portuguese pilot experiences of smart energy grids at a leading international level. They will be organized within the context of the CMU-Portugal and MIT-Portugal programs in close collaboration with major public and private initiatives in Portugal in the area of smart energy grids, including the national effort on electric mobility through the MOBI.e Project, as well as the INOVGRID project promoted by the energy company EDP in the city of Évora. Other potential initiatives are welcome to join the brainstorms.
Accordingly, we seek participants to discuss the following issues:
· What are the different meaning of smart-grids and their implications for deployment? What are current efforts to deploy pilot and large-scale projects in the smart grids area?
· What are key technological, regulatory, economic and environmental issues related to the deployment of smart grids? How far US and EU contexts imply different implementation procedures?
· How do the different smart grid designs relate to consumer behavior?
· What are the main characteristics to exploit in the Portuguese pilot studies to make them unique? What are key research areas to pursue? How to build on the existing research efforts and create projects with targeted impacts on the state of the field?
The Program Chair for this event is Inês Lima Azevedo (CMU), and the Event Co-Chairs are Marija Ilic (CMU) and Luís Magalhães (UMIC). These sessions will have the overall coordination from José Moura (CMU), João Barros (FEUP, CMU-Portugal) and Paulo Ferrão (IST, MIT-Portugal).
The first of these brainstorms will take place on June 15 th , 2010, at the Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau in Lisbon (http://www.cccm.mctes.pt/), from 9h00 to 14h45.
