How concerned should I be about my smart meter security? – Dr Zoya Pourmirza

cyber, Domestic, energy bills, Energy Systems, smartgrid

With Smart Grids comes data and communication infrastructure and the associated unease of how we keep this data and infrastructure safe.  This article aims to raise awareness, by sharing knowledge about cyber-security considerations behind the UK smart metering infrastructure and it’s rollout.

About the Author

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Dr Zoya Pourmirza, is a postdoctoral research associate at Newcastle University within the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. She was awarded her PhD in The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Architecture in the Smart Grid from University of Manchester. Her research expertise includes Smart Grids ICT networks, cyber-security, communication energy efficiency, and data compression.

Zoya carries out a wide range of research for CESI in the area of cyber-security on energy systems.

Contact:- Zoya.Pourmirza@newcastle.ac.uk

Smart Grids comprise a number of different networks that offer communication infrastructure at the various levels within the power grid. For example:

  • Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA)
  • Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI)
  • Customer Energy Management Systems

Amongst these communication networks, the AMI system has received significant concerns. These disquiets are mostly around security and privacy of consumers. Most of these concerns could be the result of negative media coverage or lack of knowledge of the AMI system operating as a whole system, while its components are interacting together.

A peace of mind for the Smart Grid customers

It is worth noting that the smart metering infrastructure is not a single component or function, but it is a whole system. This implies that looking into the cyber-security issues of a single component such as a smart meter, individually, would probably give invalid results.

Accordingly, the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) and GCHQ designed the AMI system in such a way that no single compromise would offer a significant impact. The DECC/GCHQ security team developed practical cyber-security control by using the “trust modelling” and “threat modelling” approaches. The former model refers to understanding how different players in the AMI system interact, and where trust needs to be managed. The latter model considers a set of hypothetical intentional/unintentional attack model that could cause an impact. Therefore, cyber-security should not be viewed as a hindrance to the GB smart meter roll out.

Components of the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI)

Organisations involved in the design of the whole smart metering system are:

  • Gas and electricity meters, and related equipment
  • Distributed Network Operators (DNOs)
  • Data Communication Company (DCC)
  • Communication Service Provider (CSP)
  • Third parties (e.g. price comparison websites)
How to curtail the impact of vulnerabilities in a Meter

Although it is not possible to build a 100% secure system, but the best practice is to minimise the impact of the vulnerabilities by providing a balance between security, affordability, and business needs, while meeting the policy and national security objectives.

The following chart visualises security concerns, potential attacks, and countermeasures in the AMI system through a number of phases where an attacker tries to gain access to the smart meter to create a negative impact on the power grid.

 

This article, however, does not suggest that it is impossible to compromise the AMI system, but it discusses it would be a relatively arduous process to cause severe impact on the power grid, and customers are not as vulnerable as what they think they are. Therefore, while researchers should take the security and data privacy into consideration, we can focus our energy and resources on cyber-securing other segments of the Smart Grid, which can cause greater negative impacts on the power grid infrastructure and customers.

 Reference:

Gov.uk. (2014). Smart Metering Implementation Programme: Great Britain Companion Specification version 0.8 – GOV.UK. [online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/smart-metering-implementation-programme-great-britain-companion-specification-version-08.

Exploring Smart Meter Data using Microsoft Power BI – Dr Mike Simpson

Data Analytics, energy bills, smartgrid

With the huge explosion in data volumes that the smart energy era brings, here at the National Centre for Energy Systems Integration our Computing Science researchers are utilising world-leading innovative techniques in data analytics. In this weeks blog, Dr Mike Simpson explains how the interactive visualizations and analysis capabilities of Microsoft’s Power-BI software can make light work of smart meter data.

Dr Mike Simpson is a Research Associate working part-time with CESI. His background is in programming, game development and visualisation, and he is currently working as a Research Software Developer in the Digital Institute at Newcastle University.
Contact details: mike.simpson@ncl.ac.uk  – Profile Details

Exploring Smart Meter Data using Microsoft Power BI

As data scientists, we are often asked to help our colleagues to process the data that they have collected. Often, they will have a set of research questions that they want to attempt to answer, and, in that case, there are plenty of tools that we can use to analyse the data and visualise the results. But what if you don’t know exactly what questions you want to ask? What if you have a dataset that you suspect might hold some additional value, but you’re not sure how to extract that value? These are not uncommon problems, and I’ve been looking at one potential solution.

Microsoft Power BI is a suite of analytics tools that can be used to produce a number of different visualisations by aggregating and filtering data in different ways. It includes a desktop application that can connect to a wide variety of data sources and an online platform that allows the results to be shared with collaborators or embedded on other websites. However, as well as simply displaying the data using static graphs and charts, it can also create dynamic, interactive reports, like the one shown in the screenshot below.

Here, we have taken some sector customer average electricity smart meter data from the Customer-led Network Revolution (CLNR) and produced a visualisation of the data from the participating Small Business Enterprise customers. The first graph shows the average daily energy usage profile for each Sector (the average across the whole week). But what if you want to ‘drill down’ deeper and explore the data in more detail? Well, in this example you can use the ‘Slicer’ – the checklist to the side of the graph – to select individual days within the study, which will adjust the graph to display the filtered data for that day only. Alternatively, you could use the slicer to select other time ranges within the data. In the example below, one graph shows only the data for Monday to Friday and the other graph shows only the data for Saturday and Sunday.

Now it is possible to see the distinct difference in usage patterns between the different sectors during weekdays and at weekends. You can see that, for example, Industrial usage is lower at weekends, as you would expect, while agricultural usage is fairly similar.

We’ve done something similar with the graphs below, which are part of the same report and show the average daily usage for each day of the week, as well as the average for weekdays/weekends.

As before, we can drill down into the data by using the Slicer to select different months and sectors, which filters the visualisation accordingly. This allows us to study how usage changes for each sector over the course of the year.

These are fairly simple examples, but they show how Power BI can be used to create visualisations that not only display your data, but are also interactive and also allow you to explore the data by filtering it in different ways. A Power BI report can include a number of different visualisations, including Scatter Graphs, Pie Charts, and even Maps, in addition to the Line and Bar Graphs shown in the examples above.

Using Power BI in this way allows you to explore the data that you have collected to look for unexpected patterns, and may help to reveal new Research Questions that you can answer, or may help you discover new ways to extract value from the dataset.

The role of the building engineer within the development of energy systems – Dr David Jenkins

built environment, carbon emissions, Domestic, Energy Systems

National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI) Co-Investigator, Dr. David Jenkins, is a research specialist in sustainable buildings.  In this week’s blog, he discusses how buildings can be considered in future energy systems and how his CESI research is shaping this consideration.

About the Author

Dr David Jenkins is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Sustainable Building Design at Heriot-Watt University. He has over 70 publications in the area of low- energy buildings, energy policy, and climate change adaptation. He has worked on a number of EPSRC projects concerned with the energy use of the built environment, such as Tarbase,  Low Carbon Futures, ARIES and CESI and has contributed to a number of reports in these areas for UK and Scottish Governments. He is currently PI of the CEDRI project, looking to apply community energy analyses to case studies in India.

Contact details:- d.p.jenkins@hw.ac.uk  Profile Details

The built environment has always been of great importance in any discussion of carbon saving targets in the UK. 13% of UK carbon emissions emanate from heating/cooking in residential buildings alone[1]. 29% of emissions are linked to “energy supply” (including electricity supply to the built environment), with other sectors (e.g. “business” at 17% and “industrial processes” at 3%) also having energy consumption that is heavily linked to the built environment. Therefore, as we map out our future energy systems (gas/electricity grids and other energy pathways) we must have an understanding of the evolving energy demand characteristics of the diverse range of buildings that we occupy.

A practitioner with a particularly good understanding of this detail, the building engineer, often has their professional boundaries drawn around the building itself. Therefore, the sizing of a boiler, assessment of general building performance, and choices related to low-carbon design are not always placed in the context of other important factors within the energy supply chain.

Whilst this focus is to some extent defendable – the challenges of low-carbon building design are, in themselves, considerable – it does run the risk that crucial knowledge of building performance is not reflected in energy system modelling. This is particularly true when we investigate the steep vectors of change facing our energy systems in the coming decades. Coincident changes in climate, technologies, fuels, and operation, provide a landscape of uncertainty that must be consistently reflected in projections of every aspect of our energy system: supply, infrastructure/distribution, storage, and demand. For example, a future projection assuming the continued existence of an established mains gas grid for heating homes is not necessarily consistent with the installation of several million heat pumps for residential heating. The latter change should, therefore, be accompanied by an assumption on the supply-side that the gas grid will either be reduced in scale or used for something else. Policy in these different areas must also be similarly synergistic.

The building modeller is crucial to our understanding of energy demand but, with energy systems (e.g. National Grid) involving multiple actors from different disciplines, a key challenge is to provide guidance and future projections that are translated into different discipline-specific vernaculars. Integration across the disciplines must be reflected in modelling approaches, policy-making frameworks, and outputs. The CESI project, where novel modelling techniques are being used to explore the effect of future buildings on national energy systems, sees this as a key challenge in producing actionable guidance to a range of practitioners.

Another issue that often dissuades the traditional building modeller/engineer from interacting with wider energy system analysis is “scale”. Modelling a building is quite different to modelling buildings. Capturing the energy demand characteristics of a community of buildings (e.g. such as might be served by a substation) requires an understanding of the diversity of energy use. A “spikey” electrical demand profile of a single dwelling (showing kettle’s boiling and toasters toasting) is quite different to that of a 200-dwelling profile, where different behaviours and activities are summated together in a smoother profile. Likewise, asking a building engineer to consider the aggregated demand profile of, say, 200 gas boilers working at slightly different schedules is a step change from a detailed hourly profile of a single boiler. Yet this level of detail is particularly valuable when we consider what might happen to energy demand at specific times in the future. Will electric heat pumps create national electrical demand profiles that are more difficult to meet for energy suppliers? Or are such changes perfectly manageable providing storage and management solutions are utilised at the correct point in the network? And what happens if millions of people wish to home-charge their electric vehicles at similar times in the evening? What does a new residential electrical demand profile now look like for the UK? This, therefore, does not just require an understanding of scale, but also that of temporal resolution; daily averages of energy use will not indicate where and when such problems might be manifest, and what their solutions might be.

The future building engineer will be required to build on existing core skills to reflect the above context. Changes to energy supply (such as carbon intensity) will, ultimately, alter our assumptions of “good” and “bad” technologies for the built environment. Conversely, technological and behavioural change in the built environment will change our assumptions on how to supply that energy efficiently. This co-evolution of change across sectors is central to CESI and encapsulates the challenge to, but also the value of, multi-disciplinary energy system modeling.

[1] 2015 UK GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS, FINAL FIGURES, 7th Feb 2017 https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/604350/2015_Final_Emissions_statistics.pdf

An IET debate on the role of smart meters – Dr David Greenwood

energy bills, Energy Systems, smartgrid

CESI researcher, Dr. David Greenwood, recently participated in an IET debate event discussing the rollout of smart meters in the UK. In this week’s blog, he talks us through the highlights of that debate.

About the Author

David Greenwood

Dr David Greenwood is a researcher with the National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI) and is based at Newcastle University. His research focuses on taking advantage of flexibility within energy systems and understanding sources of uncertainty and variability such as customer demand and intermittent generation. He believes that Smart Metering can play a crucial role in both of these areas, but that the approach currently being followed the UK will deliver neither the flexibility nor the understanding that we need to ensure a reliable, sustainable, and affordable energy supply.

Contact Details:- david.greenwood@ncl.ac.uk    Profile Details 

I recently traveled to Guildford represent the National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI) in a panel discussion around Smart Meters, arranged by IET Surrey. The event took place at the University of Surrey, and attendance was over 150.

Along with my fellow panelists –  Craig Lucas from the UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and Andrew Jones from EDF Energy – I answered a variety of questions from the audience around the technical, commercial, and social aspects of Smart Metering. The audience was often combative, particularly when discussing issues around the GB Smart Meter roll-out, which has received substantial negative media coverage. There were concerns around the cost of the rollout, whether the supply companies were going to complete it within the mandated timeframe, and data privacy, along with significant doubts around what the benefit would be to an individual customer, and to society at large.

While the other panellists focussed on the technical aspects of the rollout, I used my answers to describe the place of smart metering in an integrated energy system, on the need for more customer flexibility in a future energy system, and on the trade-off between data privacy and a more reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy system. I tried to get the audience on side by drawing an analogy between Smart Metering and the Google Maps traffic system; this system uses personal speed and location data from smartphone users to identify areas of heavy traffic, and in doing so provides a benefit to all of its users. Smart Meters have the potential to deliver similar benefits to electricity and gas customers by identifying when and where energy is being used and allowing network and system operators to make better-informed decisions as a result.

The event was thought-provoking for me, the audience was certainly engaged with the topic, and it was enlightening to be speaking alongside the other panelists who brought different perspectives and expertise from my own. Whilst I know we didn’t persuade everyone in the audience, I still think Smart Metering can and will deliver substantial benefits to our energy system, but many other enablers – including innovative tariffs and charging structures, better user education, and more smart home devices – are necessary for the rollout to fulfill its potential. Traditional metering will soon – as I told one audience member who was determined not to be upgraded – belong in a museum.

The IET panel 

The Role of the System Architect – Prof P Taylor and Dr S Walker

Centre Introduction, Energy Storage, Energy Systems, System Architect, Uncategorised

Professor Phil Taylor, Director and Dr Sara Walker, Associate Director of the National Centre for Energy Systems Integration have revisited the notion of the System Architect (IET 2014; Taylor 2014). How does this role need to change to reflect the ongoing evolution of the UK’s energy system? They have prepared a discussion article to articulate what this role might be and what organisation (or group of organisations) might be challenged with delivering its activities.

A copy of their paper is available from this link The Role of the System Architect – CESI Publications CESI-TF-0006

About the Authors

Professor Phil Taylor is the Director and Principal Investigator at CESI. He is an internationally leading researcher and industrial expert in energy systems, electrical distribution networks, smart grids and energy storage integration and control. He is the Siemens Professor of Energy Systems, Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor of SAgE Faculty and Head of the School of Engineering at Newcastle University.

Contact details: phil.taylor@ncl.ac.uk

Dr Sara Walker is an Associate Director and Co-Investigator at CESI. Her research focus is regarding renewable energy technology and transitions to low carbon systems, with a particular focus on policy and building scale solutions. She is Director of Expertise for Infrastructure at the School of Engineering at Newcastle University.

Contact details: sara.walker@ncl.ac.uk

About the National Centre for Energy Systems Integration

The £20M EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI) brings together an interdisciplinary team of experts to gain a deeper understanding of the value of taking a whole systems energy approach to the energy trilemma. Led by Newcastle University, CESI is a consortium of five research intensive universities and a wide range of public and industrial sector partners.

Working with Industry

CESI currently has over 34 industrial and government organisations collaborating with our team of academics and researchers. They provide:

  • a steer on the relevance of our work
  • access to their experts for consultation
  • access to resources such as engineers, labs, data and other valuable assets
  • front-line insight to the needs of the industry and their customers
Executive Summary

Energy infrastructure is considered a critical infrastructure for the UK, vital to economic prosperity. Current and future changes to the way we use energy will increasingly impact on local and national energy infrastructure. These energy issues require long term solutions based around a systems thinking approach which is immune to short term commercial and political pressures. This is important given that investment decisions can take decades to be realised and can be locked in for the next 50 years or more.

The challenges of creating a UK energy system which meets the needs of a modern economy have led to the notion of a System Architect. The original concept was assumed to be a centralised planner role but this maybe too prescriptive. In this paper, the System Architect concept is revisited.

The authors have proposed a System Architect which takes a long term, non-political, non-commercially based view of energy industry and system strategy. The System Architect can be flexible to enable bottom up initiatives as well as top down UK system overview.

The proposed System Architect is to have a role within policy making as well as policy implementation. This raises issues of governance and transparency. There is a need to ensure that a System Architect has some accountability and legitimacy.

The top down manifestation of the System Architect idea could include the System Operator function working alongside organisations such as the Energy Systems Catapult, the National Infrastructure Commission, and NGOs such as National Energy Action. A key question is whether a national level System Architect of this nature could coexist with a number of regional bottom up System Architects. The Centre for Energy Systems Integration is interested in investigating this.

What is clear, arising out of consideration of the UK’s long term energy future, is that whole systems thinking is complex but it enables:

  • more options, considering, for example, shared storage and shared assets
  • longer term thinking
  • a holistic approach to energy trilemma

Decision making will be more complex, however, needing an interdisciplinary approach and greater co-ordination. It also means that leaving things to the market is difficult.

However, the benefits of a System Architect approach which embraces whole systems thinking have a value to the sector as we move forward. These benefits include:

  • improved whole system efficiency
  • increased asset utilisation
  • increased utilisation of renewable energy
  • improved system reliability
  • improved system flexibility
  • and importantly, decision making appropriate to geography and/or energy vector

Without the role, we risk a fragmented, costly and ultimately ineffective energy system which fails to deliver a low-carbon modern energy system to UK industry and society.

The authors look forward to your views on their vision of the System Architect role, so please do not hesitate to contact us with your thoughts.

Contact details: cesi@ncl.ac.uk

As a reminder – a copy of their paper is available from this link  The Role of the System Architect – CESI Publications CESI-TF-0006

References

Taylor, P. 2014. ‘We need an independent architect to redesign the UK energy industry’, The Guardian.

IET. 2014. “Britain’s Power System The case for a System Architect.” In. London: IET.

Can the UK kick its coal habit? – Professor Phil Taylor

Do we need to continue to open new coal mines to meet our energy needs? Can a whole systems perspective help the UK to meet its obligations to reduce carbon emissions and also ensure a secure energy supply?

Professor Phil Taylor discusses his input to the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) planning debate about the need for a new open cast mine proposed near Druridge Bay in Northumberland.
About the Author

Professor Phil Taylor

BEng EngD CEng SMIEEE FIET FHEA
Director, EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration
Siemens Professor of Energy Systems
Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor of SAgE Faculty
Head of the School of Engineering
Newcastle University          

http://www.cesienergy.org.uk                                

 

Do we need to continue to open new coal mines to meet our energy needs? Can a whole systems perspective help the UK to meet its obligations to reduce carbon emissions and also ensure a secure energy supply?

In November 2015 the UK Government laid out plans for all coal-fired power stations to be phased out by 2025 at the latest.  As coal is the most polluting of the UK’s energy sources, including gas, and in light of the Paris Agreement under which the UK and other countries have agreed to undertake rapid reductions carbon emissions, coal is simply uneconomic as a fuel. In order to eliminate carbon emissions, energy companies urgently need to replace coal with cleaner energy sources.

Given this need to replace coal as a fuel, it is worrying that a new large opencast mine has been proposed near Druridge Bay in Northumberland.  The justification for opening the mine is that the coal extracted would be used to fuel power stations – maintaining the UK’s further reliance on coal as a fuel source.

Planning permission for the mine was approved by Northumberland County Council in July 2016.   However, Central Government called the approval for the mine to public inquiry on grounds of climate change.   This is the first time any planning permission decision has been called to public enquiry, on these grounds.

HJ Banks & Co Ltd argument for coal too narrow

During the public inquiry which began May 2017, HJ Banks & Co Ltd, the proposed developer of the site, argued that coal fired power stations are essential for the security of the UK’s energy supply.  Their expert witness argued that if coal fired power stations are phased out, a significant number of new gas fired power stations would be required, providing 7GW of gas generation. Other cleaner sources of energy cannot be relied upon as a consistent source of energy.  Wind power, for example, provides an intermittent source of energy as the wind does not always blow, and so wind turbines cannot be relied upon to satisfy the UK’s energy needs.  Similarly the sun does not always shine, so photovoltaic systems will not generate sufficient energy.  For these reasons, opening the new mine would be an important step in ensuring that the UK maintains good supply of coal for its power stations.

UK needs whole energy system approach

This siloed approach does not take into account the reality of the energy mix. There is no single source of fuel that provides the energy to satisfy the whole of the UK’s energy requirements.  The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) collate data on the UK’s electricity generation mix which are updated each quarter. These most recent figures were released in June 2017.  These show that compared with a year ago, gas generated energy increased by 3% to 40%, nuclear energy increased by 0.1% (19%) and renewables (wind and solar, hydro and bioenergy) increased 1% to 27%.  During the same period, the proportion of energy generated from coal fell by 5% to 11%.  These figures show coal is declining in importance and that we have many options to replace it.  However, it is just as important to consider flexibility in the energy system as a means of phasing out coal.  This flexibility can help us deal with peaks in demand and variability in the output of renewable energy sources.  This flexibility can be provided by a mixture of energy storage, demand side response (DSR) and interconnectors [i].

It is essential to take a whole systems approach when considering the UK’s energy mix. In order for the UK to meet the climate change commitments of the Paris Agreement, it needs to continue to phase out its coal fired power stations.  This would be possible by increasing the utilisation of existing gas facilities plus a small increase in capacity in power from gas; and combining this with power produced from renewables such as wind, biomass and PV.

We can use a variety of technologies at a variety of scales to store energy when we have more than is needed, or when there is too much for network cables to carry. This energy can then be used at a time when it’s needed.

Britain also imports energy, via physical links known as interconnectors.  At present, the British energy market has 4GW of interconnector capacity.  The UK energy regulator, Ofgem, forecasts that planned projects will mean that this capacity will increase to 7.3GW by 2021.  In addition, the electricity required could be managed through Demand Side Response (DSR), where consumers are given incentives to reduce their energy demand by reducing usage or turning off non-essential items when there is a peak in electricity demand [ii].

The increase in interconnector capacity, energy storage and DSR will help to balance supply and demand on the electricity grid, reducing the need to build new power stations.  An additional benefit of decarbonising our energy system more rapidly is that this offers the opportunity to also decarbonise our transport and heat sectors.

Professor Phil Taylor presented this argument at the Public Inquiry into the proposed open cast mine at Highthorn, Northumberland.  His argument represents one of the many decisions we could make to keep the lights on and is an example of the ways we can apply whole systems thinking to energy.   Professor Taylor appeared as an expert witness to the Inquiry for Friends of the Earth on a pro bono basis.  The outcome of the public inquiry is expected in autumn 2017.

References

[i] Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (2017). Section 5, Electricity. Energy Trends: June 2017 [Online]. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-trends-june-2017 [Accessed 17/7/2017].

[ii]   Ofgem (2017). Electricity Interconnectors. [Online]. Available at: https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/electricity/transmission-networks/electricity-interconnectors [Accessed 21/7/2017].

The launch of the Faraday Challenge – Prof Phil Taylor

Energy Storage, Energy Systems, smartgrid

About the Author

Professor Phil Taylor

BEng EngD CEng SMIEEE FIET FHEA
Director, EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration
Siemens Professor of Energy Systems
Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor of SAgE Faculty
Head of the School of Engineering
Newcastle University           

http://www.cesienergy.org.uk

 

 

Faraday Challenge

The launch of the Faraday Challenge is a welcome and hugely exciting piece of governmental leadership which has the potential to transform the automotive sector and have a significant impact on the UK’s energy system and air quality.

Battery costs have been falling and performance levels have been improving significantly in the last few years. However, fundamental research and development challenges remain which the UK is uniquely positioned to address. These challenges require multi-disciplinary expertise ranging from fundamental material science to systems integration, ICT and intelligent control systems development.

The North East of England, the home of Nissan Manufacturing UK, has a huge amount to offer and benefit from this automotive and energy system revolution. The potential breakthroughs in this area open up the possibility for people to see their car as much more than just a means of getting from A to B; it will allow families to become active participants in a future energy system which is low carbon, secure, equitable and affordable for all.

One such solution, a vehicle-to-grid system (V2G), can allow two-way flow of power and energy from an electric vehicle to the electricity grid or to a home. This opens up an array of innovative opportunities. The battery within the electric vehicle can provide energy to the home in times of high demand. It can also provide an energy storage solution. For example, when a household’s roof-top solar photovoltaic system (solar panels) is generating more electricity than the home needs, the excess can be diverted to the car parked in the driveway. And the V2G electric vehicle can provide a valuable service to the local electricity distribution network providing power or storage to the network to support local power demand challenges. Newcastle University, carry out world class multi-disciplinary research in this space[i] and host one of the only UK V2G units outside of Nissan research facility[ii].

Newcastle University is also the leading partner in the multidisciplinary consortium team of the EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration. They are currently also setting up the new EPSRC Supergen Energy Networks Hub. This academic research is highly collaborative and is being co-created with industry including key stakeholders such as Nissan, Northern Powergrid and Siemens. This industrial input ensures that the research is relevant, useful and therefore providing solutions to real problems in the energy system within the UK. This innovation development through to implementation with our industrial partners translates directly to jobs, productivity improvements and new markets regionally, nationally and internationally.

On a final note, an integrated energy approach is required to take full advantage of wealth of readily available renewable energy resources such as wind, solar and wave energy[iii] to fuel the UK. It has been said that energy storage is the final piece of the low carbon energy puzzle. The Faraday Challenge provides the basis for the UK academic and industrial sector to work together to solve the puzzle and thus provide meaningful societal benefits for many years to come.

References

[i] Neaimeh M, Wardle R, Jenkins A, Hill GA, Lyons P, Yi J, Huebner Y, Blythe PT, Taylor P. A probabilistic approach to combining smart meter and electric vehicle charging data to investigate distribution network impacts. Applied Energy 2015, 157, 688-698.

[ii] http://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/news/2017/01/v2g/

[iii] Roskilly AP, Taylor PC, Yan J. Energy storage systems for a low carbon future – in need of an integrated approach. Applied Energy 2015, 137, 463-466.

[iv] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/business-secretary-to-establish-uk-as-world-leader-in-battery-technology-as-part-of-modern-industrial-strategy

 

Expert opinion on energy system models – Dr Sara Walker

co-evolution, Energy Systems,

saraAbout the Author 

Dr. Sara Walker is currently an Associate Director and Co-Investigator for the £20m National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (EP/P001173/1). Dr Walker’s research focus is regarding renewable energy technology and transitions to low carbon systems, with a particular focus on policy and building scale solutions.
Dr. Walker has experience of multi-disciplinary projects. For example, her PhD involved an analysis of the renewable energy sector with regards impact of electricity industry deregulation. This was a multi-disciplinary study which involved analysis of the willingness to pay for renewable electricity products, an economic model of the UK in order to estimate future scenarios of electricity demand growth, and a technical renewable resource assessment.
Dr. Walker was recently a Co-Investigator for a European Interreg funded project, led by University of Hamburg. As part of this €6.5m project, she delivered a review of European funded electric vehicle projects and was involved in the evaluation of vehicle-to-grid technical viability. Dr. Walker has also delivered research to third sector clients Gentoo on Retrofit Reality project funded by Housing Corporation, evaluating impact of energy efficiency retrofit on behaviour and evaluating performance of solar thermal systems. The client went on to use the findings of the work to inform their Pay As You Save and Green Deal offerings.

Contact:- sara.walker@ncl.ac.uk

Expert opinion on energy system models

CESI plans to undertake co-evolution cycles, a currently vaguely defined process of bringing together sectors and energy vectors to consider how they interact. Part of the co-evolution cycle involves consulting with experts to review the work done by the partnership. So how can the expert opinion be beneficial to our consideration of energy systems?

What makes an ‘expert’?

Krueger et al (2012) summarise definitions of an expert as “someone having specialist knowledge acquired through practice (also called training), study (also called education) or experience”. The temptation with energy system models is to ask other energy system modelers for their expert view. However, there are others with local experience and practice who can make a valuable contribution, such as the system operator or system user. Equally, some stakeholders may be considered non-expert but be significantly affected by outcomes of models, and be able to contribute an opinion on the impact of model findings.

Why use the term expert ‘opinion’?

In the modelling literature, expert knowledge, expert opinion, expert judgment and expert elicitation are commonly used to describe some process of obtaining feedback from an expert on some shared information. I have deliberately used the term ‘opinion’ since, in many cases, we are asking for an expert to express a view on a relationship, process or parameter which is unknown, to a greater or lesser extent, and which has an associated uncertainty. This is particularly the case when developing scenarios of the future. What value of population should we use, and how confident are we in that value, for example. Modelling involves many choices around the model structure and the processes represented within it, the parameter values, and the boundary conditions. Often, the model developer as the expert makes choices which are implicit and undocumented. This is something we are seeking to avoid in CESI through the process of gathering expert opinion.

How can expert opinion be collected and collated?

There are a number of methods available for gathering expert opinion. Sadly, none are perfect. A key choice is with respect to eliciting individual expert opinion or eliciting opinion in a group context.
A common method used to reach consensus is the Delphi method, for example, where several iterations of opinion are discussed until consensus is reached. “A Delphi is extremely efficient in obtaining consensus, but this consensus is not based on genuine agreement; rather, it is the result of the same strong group pressure to conformity” (Woudenberg, 1991).

Individual expert opinion gathering Group expert opinion gathering
Advantages Disadvantages Advantages Disadvantages
 Can allow more  targeted questioning,  explanation and  feedback  Time cost  Sharing knowledge  can help discount  unnecessary  information  Can be dominated by  small number of people
 Enables a range of  views to be expressed  individually  Interviewer influence on expert  Can help with  aggregation of  opinions  Can over-emphasise  consensus
 No individual learning  or challenge to the  expert  Interviewer influence on  group
 Group motivation to  reach quick agreement
 Group tendency to be  more overconfident and  overestimate

The framing of the questions is very important in collecting expert opinion. Research has shown that expert opinion contains bias, based on two cognitive heuristics; ‘availability’ and ‘anchoring and adjustment’. ‘Availability’ is when the opinion of the likelihood of something is formed based on personal experience of such instances being recalled. ‘Anchoring and adjustment’ are when a value (anchor) is presented as a first guess at a parameter and the expert is asked to adjust – they typically do not adjust enough and the original anchor influences the decision on the final value (Morgan, 2014).

When discussing expert opinion, we should also consider eliciting each expert’s uncertainty in their opinion, which can be more easily expressed for quantitative rather than qualitative or conceptual issues. Uncertainty is sometimes expressed using the NUSAP approach: Numeral (the best guess value); Unit (the units of the parameter); Spread, Assessment (descriptions of uncertainty about the numeral); and Pedigree (a subjective evaluation of confidence in the evidence which support the assumptions within the other elements) (Morgan, 2014; Krueger et al, 2012). Consensus is a method of aggregation of both opinion and uncertainty. In some situations, expert opinion may differ and so mathematical aggregation may be appropriate in order to represent a range of views. Sometimes it is best not to aggregate at all, and to take the diverse views as different case study values to produce a range of scenarios. This way it is possible to identify how much the difference in expert opinion can affect the outcome of the model.

How many experts does it take to check a model?

Sample sizes vary for expert opinion gathering but are typically 3-12. Higher than this, and you get a very little gain in the robustness of findings (i.e. no new knowledge), but for low numbers of experts, it becomes difficult to get a representative sample. In identifying experts, a suggested process is to: “follow a formal nomination and selection process; ensure diversity of opinion, credibility and result reliability; minimise redundancy of information; and have a balanced and broad spectrum of viewpoints, expertise, technical points of view and organisational representation” (Krueger et al, 2012).

Cyber-Security in Smart Grid: Fact vs Hype – Dr Zoya Pourmirza

cyber, Energy Systems, smartgrid,

About the Author

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Dr Zoya Pourmirza, is a postdoctoral research associate at Newcastle University within the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. She was awarded her PhD in The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Architecture in the Smart Grid from University of Manchester. Her research expertise includes Smart Grids ICT networks, cyber-security, communication energy efficiency, and data compression.

Zoya carries out a wide range of research for CESI in the area of cyber-security on energy systems.

Contact:- Zoya.Pourmirza@newcastle.ac.uk

Introduction

The Smart Grid has three main characteristics which are, to some degree, antagonistic. These characteristics are the provision of good power quality, energy cost reduction and improvement in the reliability of the grid. The need to ensure that they can be accomplished together demands much richer Information and Communications Technology (ICT) networks than the current systems available. The addition of the ICT to the legacy grid raises concerns among various stakeholders such as consumers, utilities, and regulators. Cyber security is emerging as an important and critical element of modern energy systems that could jeopardise the availability and reliability of energy systems if compromised.

Risks and vulnerabilities associated to cyber-security in Smart Grids

The modern cyber-physical energy system that couples the communication networks to the legacy grid introduces more cyber risks and vulnerabilities, which can seriously affect the energy systems in terms of operation and reliability. While dependability against relatively rare physical failures can be argued on a “one out of n” basis, cyber-attacks have the potential to damage “n out of n” systems simultaneously, because security vulnerabilities can be exploited in parallel. This is particularly worrying as the physical dimension of energy systems is prone to cause a cascading effect in case of targeted failures.

Some of the critical vulnerabilities of smart energy system have been identified as:

  • Physical vulnerabilities
  • Platform vulnerabilities
  • Policy vulnerabilities
  • Interdependency vulnerabilities
  • Information and Communication Technology (ICT) system vulnerabilities.

Impacts:

The full extent of these impacts is, however, hard to grasp due to their highly complex and interdisciplinary nature, and the interdependencies between energy systems and a fast-changing ICT landscape. Any attack on the ICT of the energy system will, therefore, have negative impacts of varying severity on energy system operation. There is a wide range of possible attacks against the ICT of the energy systems. According to the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), those targeting the availability, integrity, and confidentiality of the ICT are of the highest importance. Such attacks are usually undertaken to:

  • Mislead the operation and control of the utility provider
  • Manipulate market and misguide the billing systems
  • Compete with other utility service providers
  • Disturb the balance between demand and supply
  • Carry out terrorist activities to damage local and national power infrastructure
  • Convey distrust between people and government
  • Increase or decrease the cost of energy consumption and energy distribution

 Are we more vulnerable than before?

A number of cyber experts have already expressed their concerns about the digitization of legacy grids. While some say the energy industry is ignoring the risks associated with the smart energy system, some go further and argue that the security of the country is at stake, due to the possibility of cyber-attacks on digitized energy systems. This trend is transforming cyber security complications from a problem to a hype. However, the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. Currently, there seems to be a lack of evidence in the form of particular incidents suggesting smart technologies can be held exclusively responsible for compromising the operation of energy systems. Traditional energy systems are already exposed to a range of cyber threats. Although smart technologies are not yet embedded in a large scale in energy systems, their deployment can increase the risk of vulnerabilities and introduce new ones. This is more likely to be associated with increased connectivity between various assets and with the internet.

Over past few years, a number of incidents have been reported in which legacy energy systems have been compromised due to their partial dependence on smart technologies. Based on these recent incidents it is envisaged that similar types of attacks could increase in numbers as smart technology deployment increases introducing additional access points (cyber and physical) for infiltrators. Potential attacks in equipment could lead to financial loss and disruption of services for buildings and households and possible safety concerns both for the owners/occupants and the broader network depending on the power ratings and role of the asset attacked.

In order to address the diverse cyber-security issues related to the smart energy systems, there is an increasing need for experts in multidisciplinary fields to work jointly in the identification and treatment of these. Newcastle University has recently launched a multi-disciplinary team comprising cyber security, and smart grid experts co-funded by EPSRC and working with other stakeholders from industry and academia offering a powerful collaboration of electrical power systems, ICT architecture and cyber-systems expertise to tackle this pressing problem.

Saving on Domestic Energy Bills – How to compare domestic energy bill tariffs

Domestic, energy bills

 

As part of a series of posts focussing on consumer energy consumption reduction in the UK, this post highlights some advice in understanding a domestic consumer energy bill based on advice from Ofgem,  the government regulator for gas and electricity markets in Great Britain

ofgem_icons

Saving on Domestic Energy Bills by finding a cheaper supplier 

In the UK, the energy regulator Ofgem, has encouraged domestic energy consumers to reduce their annual energy bills by switching to alternative tariffs with their supplier or switching supplier altogether. Tariffs are the prices that Energy Companies change per unit of energy used.

To help the consumer navigate the complex world of energy tariffs, Ofgem regulated that Energy Supply Companies must provide a “Tariff Comparison Rate” for all the energy tariffs that they bring to market.

Tariff Comparison Rate1

The Tariff Comparison Rate  (TCR) is there to act as a price comparison guide for all energy customers. It breaks down the cost of an energy tariff by combining everything from the unit rates, standing charges, VAT and discounts into one amount and then dividing it by the average annual consumption figures published by Ofgem – the energy regulator.

The idea is to allow all tariffs to be compared against one another, by giving you a single price per kilowatt hour for the energy you use.

This is how it is calculated:- 

  • multiple the unit cost by ofgem’s average energy consumption figures 
  • Add a year’s standing charge (this is a daily charge and can vary significantly between tariffs)
  • Take away any discounts that might be applicable
  • Add the VAT
  • Finally, divide this figure by Ofgem’s average consumption figures
  • This gives you the TCR in pence per kWh (kilowatt hour)

Common Energy Tariffs2

There are two main types of energy tariff – fixed or variable rate. Dual fuel and online options are an opportunity for further cost saving.

  • Fixed– this is a tariff with a fixed end date
  • Variable– the prices of this tariff aren’t fixed, so your supplier can change them as long as they give you advance notice.
  • Duel Fuel– based on a supply of energy for both your gas and electricity from one supplier – sometimes more economical
  • Online– specifically operated online, meaning paperless bills etc. so may be slightly cheaper than other tariffs

Does this save energy?

Switching supplier or finding a cheaper tariff will not reduce energy consumption – it will only reduce the amount the consumer pays for their energy. Look out for our next blog which provides some easy ideas on how to save energy within the home.

1https://www.ovoenergy.com/blog/ovo-news/tariff-comparison-rates.html

2http://www.goenergyshopping.co.uk/energy-tariffs-and-deals/common-tariffs