ETH Zurich : Computer Science : Pervasive Computing : Distributed Systems : Education : SmartEnergy HS2019

Smart Energy

Where and when:

Content

The lecture covers the role of Information & Communication Technology (ICT) for sustainable energy usage. It starts out with a general background on the current landscape of energy generation and consumption and outlines concepts of the emerging smart grid. The lecture combines technologies from ubiquitous computing and traditional ICT with socio-economic and behavioral aspects and illustrates them 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.
• Smart heating, electric mobility.

Goals

Participants become familiar with the diverse 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 on the basic cues to induce changes in consumer behavior, develop a general understanding of the effects of a smart grid infrastructure on energy efficiency. Participants will apply the learnings in a course-accompanying project, which includes both programming and data analysis. The lecture further includes smaller interactive exercises, case studies, and practical examples.

Project and Grading

The larger course-accompanying project will start in the 3rd week of the semester and finish two weeks before the semester ends. It represents a compulsory continuous performance assessment task (i.e., ‘obligatorisches Leistungselement’), and is awarded a grade that counts towards the total course-unit grade. Not taking part in the project yields a grade of 1.0 for its share of the overall grade.

Project files (same login as slides):

• Project description (Deadline postponed by one week. New deadline: 10 December 2019, midnight)


• Template (App, Data, Examples*), App Only, Data Only, Examples Only*
• *Some issues in the XGBoost exmaple code have been fixed, see also the slides with information about the changes.
  The slides also contain information on background location permissions in Android 10.
• ReadMe, How To Open the Project in Android Studio
• Android Tutorial Slides
• Neural Network Colab, XGBoost (Decision Trees) Colab
• Introduction to Colab
• Google Doc with Team Signup

Overall grading: 25% for the practical group project; 75% oral exam.

Literature

• Friedemann Mattern, Thorsten Staake, Markus Weiss
  ICT for Green - How Computers Can Help Us to Conserve Energy.
  Proc. 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

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