Blockchain and P2P: two systems that could change the energy market
What can blockchain technology offer to the energy sector? According to a research named “blockchain opportunities for the P2P energy exchange”, carried out by the Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with EY, currently about 70% energy produced cannot be destined for self-consumption. Even if, in fact, the progressive diffusion of BESS systems (Battery Energy Storage System) will allow to increase more and more the percentage of self-consumption, it will always be a fraction of energy that “should be transferred” (not only to the network, but also to the “neighbors” or to residential complex, thanks to the european new rules introduced for Energy Communities. As a distributed ledger of transactions, freely accessible and based on the mutual consent between the participants in the network itself, with the intensive use of encryption and digital signature, the blockchain is part of the innovative path taken by smart grids to encourage cutomers to buy electricity produced by prosumers at a lower price than the market one. At the same time prosumers will be able to sell energy at a better price than those purchased by grid, promoting the growth of prosumers and giving more value to the energy fed into the grid. Blockchain technology is therefore opening up new services and features, revolutionizing traditional way of energy production and sale, changing the prosumers role. Currently they can just produce and consume energy, but not yet sell it. The current context, in fact, does not allow prosumers to sell the energy’ surplus (the difference between the produced and consumed energy) to the end consumers in their neighborhood, but they just get a contribution (net metering) according to the amount of energy fed into the grid. In Italy, when the ARERA authority will definitively fix the details to establish Energy Communities, predictably for autumn 2020, and when, in 2021, the European directive will be fully implemented, this potential will become reality. The proposed solution consists of a marketplace, jointly managed by utilities and other actors, where prosumers can sell their energy to consumers, who will have the opportunity to generate their own electricity supply plan by selecting the supply mix between energy produced by utilities and / or energy produced by prosumers. The access to the marketplace could be allowed by an annual fee to remunerate the billing process for prosumers managed by the utilities. Through this mechanism, it would be possible to ensure operators an increase in revenues, which would reduce the impact of lost revenues due to the loss of energy sold to prosumers. Tera is also contributing to this innovation, which is crossing smart building and smart grid needs, the so-called “p2p energy exchange” in micro-network environments. In this scenario an important role is played by Tera’s edge computers: they can run rutine and software tools implementing functions as “Blockchain” (better said BCDL, Block Chain Distributed Ledgers) to allow the “consumption certification” and, in general, the certification of economic and energetic transactions, triggered when functions related to the Energy Community are activated, as well as for grid flexibility services. Moreover, it’s very important in this context to be able to read the fiscal meter and do it in a simple way as Beeta Power does, offering players in the sector a significant advantage.
Electricity consumption monitoring. How to track energy consumption and production in real time?
The new generation of smart meters The new E-Distribuzione 2.0 (2G) smart meter is taking the place of the electronic one in Italy, which already took over from the electromechanical one in 2001. The new smart meter allows the distributor to accurately and “temporally certify” energy consumption through convenient (remote) operations and can thus send suppliers more exact data. The new meter has the features provided for by the technical specifications adopted by the italian Authority for Electricity, Gas and the Water System (ARERA) with resolution 87/2016, which also established a series of performance indicators concerning energy efficiency. This innovation will offer users increasingly accurate information for monitoring consumption, enabling innovative smart home services in IoT perspective, encouraging virtuous behavior thanks to the greater awareness that translates itself into benefits in terms of energy efficiency. The second step: experimental monitoring On 31 December 2018 ended the experimentation phase relating the performance monitoring under real conditions of the communication via PLC-C (Chain 2 “monitoring”) between the E-Distribution Open Meter meter and the User Device (DU). The purpose of that monitoring was to observe the quality of the communication performance on PLC-C (Chain 2) with reference to the response between the messages sent by the 2G meter and the messages received by the user device installed in the field. Starting from January 2019, a preliminary phase began where the subjects managing a user device, who proved interested in enabling the communication service via Chain 2 with the Open Meter, began to sign a contract dedicated to the service. Finally, after the first experiences and following a public consultation, the combined provisions of the authority’s decisions and the regulatory update of the Italian Electrotechnical Committee determined the final phase called “chain2 Full 2.0” which is more likely to start from October 2020 and which will make all the functions of the new meter available. Beeta Power, the powerful smart meter reader Tera has successfully participated in the experimentation started by E-Distribuzione using its own Beeta Power user device, which communicates with the new 2.0 meters. Is it possible to know in real time how much I’m consuming? Or how much is my photovoltaic system producing? Yes. The smart meter reader interacts with both Beeta Box and GIoE, respectively IoT gateway for Smart Home & Building and IoT gateway for Smart Industry, and detects exact data displayed via app, providing users useful knowledge about their energy consumption with low connection voltage, both single-phase and three-phase. In case of a photovoltaic plant,, the system also reads the production meter providing values both in kWh and in euros, thus implementing an easy and fast control mechanism that optimizes the performance of the system and allows user to save money.
Edge computing, what it is and how it works
We often speak about Edge computing, Industry 4.0, Smart Processes, Smart Agricolture and Smart Manufacturing …. but what do they really mean? These terms often indicate the digital technologies used in many industries and different sectors to improve efficiency and productivity, while improving products and processes. The issue of Edge computing is becoming increasingly important among emerging technologies, connected to IoT (and its evolutions such as the IoE – internet of everything and the IIoT -Industrial IoT), and to 5G. It concerns the so-called fourth industrial revolution (I4.0) and also the global and pervasive digitalization. In this way, the opinion of Peter Levine (of Andreessen Horowitz) could be considered as an extreme, since he foresees that edge computing will soon declare the end of cloud computing. Moreover, Gartner confirms the growing and relevant interest in the issue by estimating that by 2022, the 75% of the data generated by companies will be processed outside the traditional data center, by technologies such as intelligent edge computing. There are many definitions of Edge computing online, in our opinion, if we consider that edge computing is implemented essentially through the use of devices named “edge computers”, we could say that it is a “way” to run applications on local computational systems that process data directly in the field, freeing them from close dependence with remote data centers, thus reducing Cloud congestion. The proliferation of connected devices, together with the possibility of processing “on site” and in real time (or ” near-real-time “), invite the community of system integrators, designers, systems engineers and user companies to adopt solutions that use edge computers where to run edge analytics services. What are the differences between Edge Computing and Cloud Computing? In our opinion, edge computing is at the same time a bridge and an alternative transit between the field levels and the cloud levels: if, on the one hand, the main focus, even if not exclusive, of the IoT is the level of field, sensors on objects and people, and on the other the Cloud is the natural location where the potential of the so-called “Big Data” technologies are fully expressed, edge computing is the enabling technology that allows you to implement, “on the field ”, some of the features typically destined for the cloud but which, if they were relegated exclusively to the cloud, would be limiting. In fact, some of the advantages obtainable with an Edge Computing solution in the IoT field, can be expressed in terms of: – Resilience , especially with regard to connectivity problems and secondly also with power supply problems: continuity of power supply and data network are difficult to guarantee 100%; the absence of power supply and connectivity in the field must always be taken into account, especially for “safety critical” applications, both when the causes are physiological, and when they are malicious, negligent or even intentional; it is therefore essential, in different types of applications, to have “system logics”, algorithms, which are able to keep the basic functions of an IoT system active even when there is no possibility of connecting to the Cloud; – Timeliness of the action , both when it comes to generating alarms and when it comes to real feedback typical of control systems, meaning the term control in the engineering sense; it is the so-called “real time” or “almost real time”, ie the low “latency” of the system; It is therefore essential, in some types of applications, to have the ability to generate alarms or feedbacks quickly, lower than those typically guaranteed with the cloud (and this even where it is often thought – erroneously – that 5G is in itself the solution, because in any case the low latency envisaged by 5G remains influenced by the unpredictable coexistence of many applications that divide the available bandwidth). Edge computing is therefore an increasingly relevant topic and the arguments set out above denote a level of strategic nature of this technology. Not to be overlooked, among the features of an edge computer, is not only the possibility of “running” algorithms, also of the “AI – Artificial Intelligence” type (or at least ML, Machine learning), but also the ability to simultaneously support a high number of communication protocols in order to expand the range of connectable devices and therefore the universality of the solution (expressed in terms of flexibility, sum of modularity and scalability). This is our vision that we try to transpose into our technological products, the result of planning and concrete skills, which combine highly technological know-how with the quality and safety of “made in Italy”.
Tera allo SMART BUILDING EXPO 2019
Tera ha il piacere di invitarti allo Smart Building Expo 2019 a Fiera Milano – Rho, l’evento italiano più importante in tema di integrazione tecnologica nel settore degli edifici: iscriviti alla nostra newsletter e richiedi subito il tuo biglietto omaggio. Dal 13 al 15 Novembre ti aspettiamo al Padiglione 6, Stand D16 con le nostre soluzioni IoT. Saremo lieti di mostrarti la compatibilità dei nostri Edge Computers con l’innovativa piattaforma FIN Framework della società californiana J2 Innovation Inc. (società del gruppo Siemens) . TORNA ALLA PRESS
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TERA e le tecnologie SMART GRID
L’Ing. Antonio SACCHETTI , CEO di TERA interverrà, in occasione del workshop “ S3PEnergy: Smart Mediterraneo. Best practices, innovation and pilot projects in smart grid development in the Mediterranean region” , durante la sessione intitolata «Dissemination of innovation and “barriers and challenges” to new investments. Lessons from implementation cases». Il workshop, organizzato dal Joint Research Centre Institute for Energy and Transport della Commissione Europea con la collaborazione del Politecnico e della Regione Puglia , avrà luogo presso la Camera di Commercio di Bari nei giorni 23 – 24 giugno 2016 e ha l’obiettivo di promuovere e migliorare lo sviluppo delle tecnologie smart grid nelle regioni del Mediterraneo e, allo stesso tempo, di supportare gli attori locali nella definizione dei propri programmi e progetti. Il tutto si concluderà con la visita allo SHOWROOM Smart City RES NOVAE di Bari. Clicca qui per ulteriori informazioni sul workshop Scarica il programma dell’evento
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