By Ivsen Platcheck, MSC. ENG.
May 7, 2021
Keywords: Energy, Smart-City, Smart energy grid, Clean Energy
| Abstract In this text, the author proposes a new approach for providing energy to a city, a district, or even a block. It proposes the usage of clean energy generation processes using, mostly, solar panels and wind turbines. It proposes too to connect those generators to the public energy provider as a contribution for the quality, and high availability of enough energy to feed all the current and future needs. The text, also, touches the social point of the Smart Cities theory and practice. It proposes a shift of paradigm for the humanity, moving from a power and wealth hunger approach to a quality of life for all people, regardless of origin. This text is short and aims to plant the idea and the author seeks for partnership to develop those ideas to reach a doable use of these ideas, and help bring more comfort, life quality and more harmony in the urban environment, besides providing a better life for the disadvantaged societies. This text is based on the author’s ideas, background, and there is no correlation with any other text that, perhaps, may bring similar ideas. |
- Introduction
Among the trending tops research in technology, nowadays, is the concepts for Smart Cities. Thinking over the several features which can make a city somehow smart, it can be said that is the energy production, transmission, and distribution to all kind of consumers for this commodity.
Energy became one of the most important commodities to the humankind. Under the huge scientific and technological evolution, the need for energy increases exponentially, and the highest availability is required, with the best quality and stability.
I live in a country where we have the energy generation mostly based on hydroelectric plants. That kind of facilities are being used for as long as I remember. And I am somehow pretty old.
The Hydroelectric Plants have the benefits to reduce pollution over the coal, oil, or nuclear thermoelectric plants. But its environmental damage is also huge, once there must use a massive volume of water flowing, and normally flooding large areas, and embanking the water with controllable floodgates, had been the best way to guarantee the means for generating large amounts of energy.
Those plants demand a huge sort of resources to be built, and they are directly dependent from the rain at the right places, along the rivers which flow to fill those flooded areas.
Besides the costs to build those giant energy generation plants, the transmission of this energy to the consumers cam be really challenging, depending on the distance, the terrain to be covered by the poles and cables, and all the natural environment to be affected by all those changings, the energy itself, and its effects over the natural life on the areas.
On the last few years, some alternative ways for energy generation had been made somehow easier and, in certain ways, cheaper: sun, wind, magnetic, sea movement, pressure, mainly.
- Means for Clean Energy Generation
Due for the abundance on sun, wind, or both together, in most of the regions around the globe, I will focus on sun and wind generation, to propose a plan for making a smarter use of energy, mostly on cities, combining self-generation with the current public energy providers.
I will focus now, in one city. Any size of city, with several houses, buildings, facilities of all sizes, heights, and level of energy consumption. Over and around those buildings and houses there can be different exposure to the sun, and different spots for blowing the winds.
On each area, place, or spot, there can be used some size of solar panels, wind turbines, or even both working together. Besides generating its own energy, this can be joining the massive currently energy providers, adding power to the whole network.
On a smart city, the sort of devices used to turn them smart, including computers of all sizes and architecture, sensors for all events that must be monitored, network infrastructure, charging electric cars, and so on will for sure demand a quantity of energy that can lead to larger generation plants using any technology.
Those needs may be a trigger for building huge facilities that will, certainly make as much dirt on water or air, or even collecting danger litter like radioactive sub-products.
Adding a huge amount of self-generated energy to the network can balance the arising demanding. The right sensors and devices, using PLC (Power Line Communications) can provide information about who is the provider, and the amount of energy being inserted at the public network.
One main regulation center can decide how, when, and where to add more energy, and the amount of energy each one will insert into the network.
- The plan
The main plan is to use all the engineering resources to mark the top roofs that can be more suitable to catch the highest amount of solar exposure. The shadow areas and other situations that may low the intensity or the exposure period for the solar rays and make the spots unsuitable for generating enough energy that should pay the effort on collecting.
The next task should be searching for the spots, not only on the top of the buildings or houses, but on any level that naturally the wind blows, depending on the shape, distance, height, of all constructions. The wind turbines can have the size and efficiency possible, due for the places where they will need to be installed on.
The wind, in urban areas, may become more useful than the sun, for producing energy, once the channeling of the winds can be very intense, due for some narrow crossways.
Besides the wind and the sun, there can be other possibilities for producing energy, like pressing sensors on the floors and grounds, sound waves from traffic and other noise generators available on the streets. They all can be thought as a mean to produce more energy, using naturally clean sources, and ass to the circuit.
Once the spots and the means for producing energy had been listed, due for the technical features available at the area under study have been defined by the potential amount of energy they can provide, against the cost effort to collect, there is the need for measuring the total energy needed by the consumers in the area.
There must be, of course, a good study on the growth of the needed energy too. On Electrical Energy and urban architecture studies, it is not too hard to preview this growth. And all the study must provide the means for escalating energy production.
All this self-produced energy must be added, using couplers, resequencer, regulators, with all the safety measures to the public provider. There must be means to measure the amount of energy self-produced and consumed among its network.
If the self-generation produces less energy than it is needed by its own network, it will need to consume energy from the public provider, but instead if the internal network produces more energy than needed by its consumers, the surplus energy can be added to the public network.
This will lead to a situation which some consumers will pay for the extra energy provided by the public network, or the system will have to remunerate the self-productors somehow.
The first big benefit will be a more high availability of energy for the urban area, minimizing as much as possible, the blackout possibility, due for over consumption, or eventual restriction one the energy provided through the public network.
In order to control this balance among public generation and self-production, urges the need for some controlling facilities, that can control the amount of self-generated energy being added to the public network.
To accomplish this goal, there must be remote watching at the amounts of energy produced and consumed, on each network, and make the appropriate balance operations to comply to thew local energy regulations. This interlink will not need another path, as there can be used the power lines, properly coupled for RF transmission, using Power Line Communication principles.
- Political Considerations
Each government and society must lead to an agreement over this matter. Once the batteries and accumulators are full or empty, the control central command may allow to join energy from any of the available sources and balance the generation to consumption.
Once the advent of the Smart Cities aims to serve the people, fulfill the needs for the population, based on the Human Being and its life quality, it will require a shift of paradigm, at the societies. Currently, mostly the profit, only the capital is what’s matter, against watching the people’s needs, the workers.
The public energy providers will still have their profit. The high consumption clients will still need to use the energy provided, in full scale. Facilities as hospitals, industry, research centers, military, universities, among others that will certainly use more energy than it will be reasonable to generate on themselves. Due for its complexity, business should focus on their main business, than deal with the infrastructure costs.
This idea is of an intelligent and fully connected network which can provide energy to the whole city, sharing public and self-generated energy.
One extra benefit for using renewable and less polluting sources, the planet`s nature will not keep being damaged beyond its self-recovering capabilities.
I had been modelling this kind of systems for a long term. I figure that the profits from the electric companies can decrease, and this may lead to a political issue, among governments and large corporations.
This comes to the point I touched before, the switch of the paradigm for humanity. Leave the wild nonsense competition for power and wealth, then learn to live in a minimally equal society, with no hunger for money, or dominating power, from people over people.
The gap among poor and rich is too large and unfair, once we are all human being, without any important difference, regardless of social or community origin.
Those ideas described above came from all my years of researching, studying, working, at a wide range of knowledge fields that shape the creation of an engineering professional. I didn’t use any specific text, or paper, or book, but all the texts I had read, besides all the results of self-experiments, along a long time professional.
This small text is a first attempt to call co-workers to develop those ideas and make some doable project products to offer a better life for the humankind. I am open to discuss any possibility of collaboration and co-working and sharing knowledge and aggregating people or organizations to the effort of building a better planet and a better human race.
Author – Ivsen Platcheck, MSC. ENG. Brazilian citizen, graduated in Electric Engineering, by the PUC-RS, Master’s in Science by the ITA. He has a more than thirty-eight years of experience working on a wide range of knowledge fields related. Currently, works as a System Analyst at the CEEE-D (Cia. Estadual de Distribuição de Energia Elétrica, the energy distribution in his state). Besides this job, he has a consulting and project management contracts, from time to time.