Energy conservation and management

Energy management aims at monitoring, controlling, and optimising the performance of the generation and/or transmission systems. Conservation is a key point for optimisation, allowing generation to match demand. Those topics are essential for the maintenance of an ideal power system which manages the generation of energy depending on a timely demand, charging the users actual market prices for the electricity usage and not allowing for black outs due to failures and variations in the demand. A robust production and distribution system should be able to predict both the amount of energy being generated from various sources, including those coming from the usually unsteady renewable energy sources, and the local and global demand, allowing for an efficiently distribution not only of energy but also of data. This optimal generation and distribution energy system is called "Smart Grid" in United Kingdom. It monitors and predicts the variations in energy generation and demand, and it allows for the use of information in a dynamic and interactive way to maximising the performance of the system -[Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC)].


The creation of the ideal energy system as the Smart Grid one entails:

(i) The creation of an optimal energy storage management system formed by a cost attractive energy storage device that stores and delivers the required energy.

(ii) The designing of an optimal grid topology, which prevents cascade failures and blackouts and, at the same time, allows not only for the transmission of "arbitrary" amounts of energy as well as of information.

(iii) The designing of optimal data monitoring system, which allows for the construction of accurate models of the functioning of the grid based only on partial knowledge, obtained from the observation of only few variables at particular times. 

Researchers at Aberdeen are studying topics (ii) and (iii).