ETH Zurich : Computer Science : Pervasive Computing : Distributed Systems : Education : SmartEnergy HS2015

Smart Energy

Where and when:

Content:

The lecture covers the role of Information & Communication Technology (ICT) for sustainable energy usage. It outlines concepts of the emerging smart grid as well as approaches to motivate sustainable consumer choices. For that it combines technologies from ubiquitous computing and traditional ICT with insights from socio-psychological research and illustrates these concepts with examples from actual applications.

Specific topics include:

• Background on energy generation and consumption; characteristics, potential, and limitations of renewable energy sources.
• Introduction to energy economics.
• Smart grid and smart metering infrastructures, virtual power plants, security challenges.
• Demand management and home automation using ubiquitous computing technologies.
• Changing consumer behavior with smart ICT.
• Benefits and challenges of a smart energy system.

Goals:

Participants become familiar with the challenges related to sustainable energy usage, understand the principles of a smart grid infrastructure and its applications, know the role of ubiquitous computing technologies, can explain the challenges regarding security and privacy, can reflect the basics cues to induce changes in consumer behavior, develop a general understanding of the effects of a smart grid infrastructure on energy efficiency, and know how to apply the learning to related design projects.

Exercises:

The lecture will also include interactive exercises, case studies and practical examples.

Literature:

• Friedemann Mattern, Thorsten Staake, Markus Weiss
  ICT for Green - How Computers Can Help Us to Conserve Energy.
  Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Energy-Efficient Computing and Networking (e-Energy), ACM, pp. 1-10, April 2010.

• David MacKay
  Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air.
  Free online book, UIT Cambridge, UK, December 2008.

• International Energy Agency
  Gadgets and Gigawatts - Policies for Energy Efficient Electronics.
  Free online book, 2009.

• Ingo Stadler
  Power Grid Balancing of Energy Systems With High Renewable Energy Penetration by Demand Response
  Utilities Policy, Volume 16, Issue 2, pp. 90–98, June 2008.

• Colin McKerracher, Jacopo Torriti
  Energy Consumption Feedback in Perspective: Integrating Australian Data to Meta-Analyses on In-Home Displays
  Energy Efficiency, Volume 6, Issue 2, pp. 387-405, May 2013.

• Hunt Allcott, Sendhil Mullainathan
  Behavior and Energy Policy
  Science, Vol. 327, no. 5970, pp. 1204-1205, March 2010.

• Jessica M. Nolan, P. Wesley Schultz, Robert B. Cialdini, Noah J. Goldstein, Vladas Griskevicius
  Normative social influence is underdetected
  Personality and Sociol Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 34, no. 7, pp. 913-923, July 2008.

• Hans-Jürgen Appelrath, Henning Kagermann, Christoph Mayer (Eds.)
  Future Energy Grid. Migration to the Internet of Energy
  acatech STUDY, 2012.

• Therese Peffer, Marco Pritoni, Alan Meier, Cecilia Aragon, Daniel Perry
  How people use thermostats in homes: A review
  Building and Environment, Vol. 46, no. 12, pp. 2529-2541, June 2011.

• Jesse Jenkins, Ted Nordhaus, Michael Shellenberger
  Energy emergence: Rebound and backfire as emergent phenomena
  Breakthrough Institute, February 2011.

• Kenneth Gillingham, Matthew J. Kotchen, David S. Rapson, Gernot Wagner
  Energy policy: The rebound effect is overplayed
  Nature, Vol. 493, pp. 475-476, January 2013.

Learning Material:

Contact: