Enabling the Smart-Energy Future

Euro­pean Util­i­ty Week 2019 in Novem­ber was the meet­ing point for key play­ers in the Smart Ener­gy sec­tor, where the lat­est devel­op­ments in the tran­si­tion to a ful­ly inte­grat­ed, low-car­bon ener­gy ecosys­tem will be revealed and discussed.

Ana­log Devices (ADI), on stand Q130 in the Util­i­ty Week Exhi­bi­tion, showed the spe­cial exper­tise its tech­nolo­gies can con­tribute in areas such as smart meter­ing, pow­er qual­i­ty analy­sis, and ener­gy storage.

Glob­al issues of cli­mate change, car­bon diox­ide emis­sions, and pol­lu­tion, set against an ever-grow­ing demand for ener­gy, are rarely out of the news: the need to migrate to a low-car­bon, intel­li­gent ener­gy infra­struc­ture is press­ing. Oper­at­ing a tru­ly “smart” ener­gy grid will require new capa­bil­i­ties in mea­sure­ment, mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol at all scales, bridg­ing the ana­log world of the pow­er grid itself and the dig­i­tal domain of analy­sis and con­trol – a key inter­face where ADI can offer an unri­valled wealth of experience.

Maximising the potential of the Smart Meter

A demon­stra­tion on the stand will fea­ture Ana­log Devices’ cloud-based ana­lyt­ics ser­vice receiv­ing peri­od­ic meter health data from mSure enabled meters. The meters are based on an ener­gy meter­ing IC with mSure tech­nol­o­gy and licensed firmware to effi­cient­ly pack the data for net­work trans­mis­sion. The ana­lyt­ics ser­vice mon­i­tors the accu­ra­cy of the meters, analy­ses drift, and pre­dicts when meters will become out-of-spec enabling util­i­ties to bet­ter plan meter asset replace­ment. In addi­tion, the ana­lyt­ics ser­vice con­tin­u­ous­ly detects meter tam­per­ing allow­ing util­i­ties to pri­or­i­tize inves­ti­ga­tions and pro­tect rev­enue from elec­tric­i­ty theft.

By com­bin­ing cloud-based ana­lyt­ics with edge-based sens­ing and pro­cess­ing, the com­pa­ny deliv­ers a pow­er­ful solu­tion for elec­tric­i­ty util­i­ties to pro­tect rev­enue and man­age equip­ment cost-effectively.

Waveform analysis for power quality ‑monitoring

A fur­ther demon­stra­tion high­lights the issue of pow­er qual­i­ty and har­mon­ic con­tent. Renew­able sources on the gen­er­a­tion side of the net­work, and com­plex loads on the con­sum­ing side, can lead to high lev­el of reac­tive load­ing and har­mon­ic wave­form con­tent, both being inef­fi­cient and even haz­ardous to the infra­struc­ture. Ana­log Devices’ fun­da­men­tal capa­bil­i­ties, devel­oped over decades, in the area of sig­nal cap­ture, ana­log-to-dig­i­tal con­ver­sion, and sig­nal analy­sis, are an exact match for this prob­lem. The demon­stra­tion is based around a high-inte­gra­tion mul­ti-phase energy/power qual­i­ty mea­sure­ment IC that com­bines A/D con­ver­sion, dig­i­tal sig­nal pro­cess­ing and wave­form buffer­ing. Using the lat­ter fea­ture, the demon­stra­tion will show extrac­tion of resam­pled wave­form data plus basic har­mon­ic analy­sis based on one line cycle of data for both the cur­rent and volt­age chan­nels, requir­ing only an Arduino Due card as a host and devel­op­ment platform.

Ecosystems for battery-based energy storage

As the bal­ance of gen­er­a­tion shifts towards renew­able sources, ener­gy stor­age assumes ever-greater impor­tance. A series of demon­stra­tions will fea­ture the work of indus­tri­al part­ner com­pa­nies who have select­ed Ana­log Devices tech­nol­o­gy to opti­mise bat­tery-based designs. The semi­con­duc­tor man­u­fac­tur­er offers a range of solu­tions that enable pre­cise mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol of bat­tery sys­tems from the indi­vid­ual cell lev­el, up to the sys­tem lev­el. Part­ners par­tic­i­pat­ing in this exhib­it include Ster­com Pow­er Solu­tions, show­ing state of the art bat­tery man­age­ment sys­tems, tai­lored for bat­tery ener­gy stor­age sys­tems (ESS). The ESS spe­cial­ist will also show­case a full set of prod­ucts for ener­gy stor­age and elec­tric vehi­cle charg­ing infra­struc­ture, imple­ment­ing ADI’s lat­est tech­nol­o­gy on iso­lat­ed gate dri­ver and pow­er man­age­ment ICs.