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Beywatch Glossary

Demand Balancing - Demand Response

Demand Response entails all the actions that contribute to manage the customer power consumption in response to supply conditions. On one hand, information may be sent to the households, either critical periods (e.g. peak load periods), dynamic energy price signals, or direct load control signals. On the other hand, the customer may adapt his consumption (his "demand") according to this information, by using the smartness of the devices in the household (appliances, RES) coordinated by the BeyWatch Agent.
These mechanisms can avoid investments in the electricity distribution network or in new production means, facilitate the integration in the network of intermittent production as renewable energy systems, as well as strongly decrease risks of blackouts by flattening the overall load curve.

Neighbourhood level

The hierarchical system will cover larger geographical regions (such as building blocks) to provide statistical data and better coordination of the energy resources at the neighbourhood level. By monitoring the neighbourhood consumption, the BeyWatch system will be able to cleverly assess both the CO2 emission and energy consumption savings at building blocks level.

Low Power white goods

In the international formally recognized classification, the devices with the lower energy consumption are declared as class A or higher (A+, A++ etc.). For the beyWatch project, Gorenje is developing an appliance of much lower consumption device than in the current standard, which could be rated class A++.

Energy aware appliances

Energy aware appliances are low power appliances which, additionnally, embed an energy watcher and may also communicate for Demand Response purposes, whether they directly react to Demand Response signals or they obey the Beywatch agent who converts these signals into control commands. A typical energy aware device is the washing machine cooperating with the elecricity grid as presented in the Beywatch cartoon.

Intelligent Control
Intelligent Control is automatic control of energy-aware appliances by means of software. Control is intelligent in the sense that the software does not merely act as a relay of user commands. I.e. the role of the software is not simply to provide a graphical user interface to the user through which to control the devise. Rather, intelligent control is able to:
(a) understand and act upon abstract user preferences and user-set goals. E.g. “have the clothes washed by 18:00” or “prioritize reduction of energy consumption over timely conclusion”. Such goals allow enough leeway to the intelligent control software to make optimizing / scheduling decisions of its own (as opposed to merely relaying turn-off / on signals initiated by the human user).
(b) encompass in its view, not just a single appliance but rather a whole array of home appliances, thus broadening the scope of optimizations and intelligent-decision making that the software can make independently of the user.
(c) optionally include in its decision making algorithm inputs from external information sources, such as whether forecast, tomorrow’s applicable tariffs and so on.

Energy Watcher
An advanced type of electricity meter. It is used to measure and report the amount of electrical energy consumed beyond a specific point on a transmission line on the home grid. An energy watcher, being an advance electricity meter, can report both consumed energy and instantaneous power and also act as a relay. These functions are controlled by the Agent over a remote accessible API.

Supervisor
The Supervisor is the software application that allows a human operator working at the electricity company to view, monitor and control a number of Agents. It also functions as a service aggregator at the neighborhood level and is responsible for relaying configuration information, events, alarms and statistics from the Agents to the human operators (upstream), while it will also receive and relay downstream commands, configuration info, software updates, new services software etc.

Agent
The BeyWatch Agent platform is the system that hosts: (a) the Intelligent Control (see definition) function, (b) the graphical user interface enabling the home user to monitor / control house appliances and (c) the home-wide intelligent metering device.

User-centric
BeyWatch will optimize energy consumption taking into account users preferences. It will also give them a richer and much more interactive experience and impression on their behaviour, available options and alternatives in terms of savings, carbon footprint and appliances management. This experience will be achieved through the GUI.

GUI
The BeyWatch Graphical User interface will be accessible from various devices (PC, Mobile Phone, TV), and will be divided in different functionalities that will cover all the aspects in which BeyWatch needs input from the user. It will also give textual and graphic information in useful areas for them. Depending on the user profile, the GUI will trigger different functionalities, implemented as subsections called "BeyWidgets".

BeyWidget
Each one of the functionalities included in the GUI will be displayed as a "BeyWidget", a easy-to-deploy submodule that will cover specific&concrete BeyWatch areas, in Home, BSS, Neighbourhood or other domains.

BSS
One of the main areas in the GUI will deal with Business Support Software, a set of applications (BeyWidgets) that will optimize the relationship between the BeyWatch user and the electricity providers. They will benefit both parties in terms of tariff optimization, demand/response issues, peak shaving and any other areas useful for any of them.

CPS (Combined Photovoltaic and Solar system)

CPS is a system which includes two solar generation plants and a smart monitoring device. The CPS integrates a device able to produce hot water using the sun power (ST = Solar Thermal panel), a device able to produce electric energy from the sun (PV = Photo Voltaic panel), a data acquisition (DA)system and an electronic control system.

The PV system main component is the generator, constituted by a string made of some series connected modules, depending on the PV panel peak power.
The ST system is constituted by a modular solar collector combined with a forced circulation system and with a water tank.
The DA system is integrated with the PV and the ST panels and constituted by several probes in order to monitor and control electrical and thermal quantities and the solar irradiation. It is also provided with an actuator for the heating of water from a not renewable energy source.
The electronico control system (electronic boards) are necessary in order to monitor and log the characteristic parameters of CPS. In particular, a Master micro is responsible of the communication with the Agent while collecting all the information coming from a few slave micros, which in turn will implement the control of the CPS subsystems.

Comments

"ICTs as leverage technologies for energy efficiency"
Asunción Santamaría Universidad Politécnica de Madrid - CeDInt

"Very nice site!"
Pharm GE

"Red Eléctrica de España has a strong commitment with Demand Side Management and Energy Efficiency and fully supports this projects objectives"
Susana Bañares Hernandez Red Electrica de España

"As a utility company in Spain, we consider this project as an enormous contribution to solve the challenges that are faced with in this sector during the next century."
Antonio Castellanos ENDESA Network Factory

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ICT for sustainable homes

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October 24-25, 2011