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technology Smart energy systems being developed at Swinburne are changing the way householders can monitor and reduce energy use, as well as the way energy is supplied and used across neighbourhoods. power to the people by kristen alford left to right: Associate Professor Lachlan Andrew, Professor Ryszard Kowalczyk and Dr Bao Vo at swinburne’s energy management Research centre. The option to switch on a light and turn on the television is a ritual taken for granted in most households. But as energy prices and fossil fuel emissions continue to rise, our dependence on electricity and our capacity to control our household power consumption is becoming an important economic and environmental issue. Creating opportunities to control the energy use, not just of households, but also of neighbourhoods and nations, is an area of expertise for Professor Ryszard Kowalczyk, of Swinburne’s Energy Management Research Centre. “We develop cutting-edge technologies and software solutions to allocate resources so that people may be satisfied individually, and the system and its operations optimised overall,” Professor Kowalczyk says. Beating the upwards trend Australia’s retail electricity prices rose by 72 per cent between June 2007 and June 2012, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. With no end in sight for power price hikes, consumers and companies have an increasingly powerful motivation to moderate their usage – especially if they can reduce bills by shifting some of their power usage to lower-priced, off-peak periods. 10 | swinburne | venture | issue ONE 2013
technology Designing smart energy systems that monitor and control household appliances allows for greater efficiencies and also offers opportunities to change the way we share, use and generate energy within neighbourhoods – better balancing supply and demand. For power companies, this information could bring huge efficiency savings. “The current infrastructure is designed for the peak demands, which typically occur only one per cent of the time, during high summer,” explains Professor Kowalczyk. “By shifting usage from the peak demand periods, the infrastructure can be better used and also the expensive spot prices for supply can be significantly reduced.” International partnership Professor Kowalczyk came to smart energy solutions through his background in artificial intelligence and agent-based systems, working to automate negotiation and support decision-making processes. He founded Swinburne’s Energy Management Research Centre (EMRC) in 2011 in partnership with US-based technology company GreenWave Reality, which needed intelligent energy management software in order to deliver on the potential of smart sensors they had developed. The EMRC’s work has attracted the interest of energy sector companies such as GE Energy, Siemens Energy and Enel, and communications companies including Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks. Its research team is generating new insights into consumer behaviour and energy use patterns, by analysing data from smart meters attached to appliances in specially monitored households. The team is also developing new ways to support and automate decisions about appliance usage, based on patterns of consumer behaviour and need combined with patterns of grid-wide energy usage, to examine ways to reduce peak load. We are coming to a point where we can ... help consumers save money and at the same time help utility companies save money… Professor Ryszard Kowalczyk “These intelligent systems provide functionality so that we can optimise the usage of energy and how it is allocated to different households, so we can find ways of minimising the cost,” Professor Kowalczyk says. Smarter technology EMRC staff, Associate Professor Lachlan Andrew and Dr Bao Vo, are analysing patterns of energy usage of appliances in a bid to develop a system of power signatures – which would enable houses of the future to identify fridges, ovens or other powerconsuming appliances. “We are trying to detect which appliance is plugged in – for example, is it a toaster or an air-conditioner?” Dr Vo says. “Once we can do this, the next challenge is to monitor consumption within the house and work out which devices you can switch on and off to optimise energy usage and reduce costs.” Coupled with an energy management system on a local computer drive, this system could enable future homes to automatically manage appliances regardless of where they are located in the home. Local solutions Similar logic can be applied to regulating neighbourhood power demand. “The grid would not cope if a lot of consumers wanted to charge an electrical vehicle at the same time, so we need to develop a system of coordination between households. It can’t be a solution that is centralised – where someone else decides for you when the car can be charged. It has to be a process of mutual benefit, where you have options, but some popular choices cost more.” Using Professor Kowalczyk’s system, users would be able to select some parameters – such as what time their electric car is required for use – and the system could balance those needs by identifying a charging time that optimises the combination of neighbourhood demand, low-cost power and high supply times. This means both the user and the distribution network realise benefits. “We are coming to a point where we can provide software to help consumers save money and at the same time help utility companies save money by balancing the load,” says Professor Kowalczyk. Sharing the load Optimisation means energy is not wasted through transmission when it’s not needed. If a household has a solar panel that is generating energy, they can share that energy with their neighbour. Additionally, households can use back-up sources of energy, such as a charged electric car, to supplement energy supply, bringing added energy security to the household and neighbourhood. Smarter systems are moving energy management from the supply side to a more sophisticated consideration of both supply and demand factors, balancing a system where households, neighbours and distribution networks have a role to play in the optimisation of energy, reducing costs and enabling a more robust network. l The new home of design & innovation } Swinburne is proud to announce the construction of our new $100 million Advanced Manufacturing and Design Centre, opening in 2014 at the Hawthorn campus. }swinburne.edu.au
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Page 5 and 6: upfront quest for a genuine win-win
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