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| CSIRO | SOLVE | Issue 7 | May 06 | |
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ARTICLE
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY:
ICT – The Smart On Switch By Rebecca Thyer
Information and communication technology is becoming the linchpin for solving big national challenges across water, health, energy, light metals, food and the oceans.
Smart Power Manager Soon electricity consumers will be able to direct electricity generation to match their specific consumption patterns through the development of interactive devices that more closely link users, from households to factories, with electricity generators. These ‘intelligent’ devices, or agents, monitor consumption and generation and communicate with each other to better match electricity use and generation in real time. The technology is expected to lead to more efficient energy management and reduce the incidence of costly blackouts caused by excessive demand at peak times. The agents are a product of the Energy Transformed Flagship, a national research program led by CSIRO, and result from ground-breaking research conducted by CSIRO’s ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Centre in partnership with the Division of Energy Technology. ICT encompasses research and development in IT, telecommunications, robotics, software engineering, networking, sensing and information engineering, and is helping Australian scientists solve important problems in areas including energy, health, light metals, water, food and oceans research. The ICT Centre’s expertise in complex systems science and artificial intelligence research is a major component of this project, which is based on more intelligently controlling energy demand across many thousands of consumers. CSIRO research scientist Dr Geoff James, project leader from the Autonomous Systems Laboratory at the ICT Centre, says that linking consumer choice with electricity generation through intelligent agents will lead to improved electricity distribution, with benefits for both consumers and the electricity industry. He says CSIRO’s technology will allow consumers to preprogram certain energy choices – based on price or preference – that reflect their particular energy consumption parameters. “If consumers have their own energy management agent, they can decide, for example, to set their pool pump to come on in the middle of the night, when electricity prices are cheaper, or to turn high-usage items off when prices rise, leading to better load management,” Dr James says. “On the other hand, energy providers could request load reductions between certain times, at short notice, according to network and market needs. Intelligent agents will know which consumers are happy to cut back and will communicate with each other to deliver the right overall result. It’s like automatic real-time consumer feedback.” Dr James says the technology gives added value to on-site generation, so that local, alternative energy supplies, including renewable energy sources, can be better utilised and economically attractive. A prototype energy management system that uses sensor and agent technologies to coordinate supply and demand, controlling generation and loads intelligently as the market changes, is being trialled at CSIRO’s Energy Centre at Newcastle. Effectively a mini-electricity grid, the system incorporates a gas microturbine generator, photovoltaic arrays, a wind generator, a weather station, cool rooms and part of the building’s climate system, which are all under agent control. The system is also being trialled by a major Australian utility company. Dr James says the intelligence to drive these agents and allow coordination between all parties is where the CSIRO’s knowledge of ICT is critical. For further information contact: |
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