Introducing a New SIG: Energy and Power
The Energy and Power Special Interest Group (SIG) promotes service innovations in the energy and power sectors. Although these sectors are supposed to provide economic, efficient, reliable, and clean energy and power services to end-users, the oligopolistic nature of the energy sector in general, and monopolistic nature of power sector in particular, led to services often been neglected and even deliberately ignored. With the advent of distributed renewable resources, smart grids, and other technological advances, innovations to achieve high-quality services are now critical to the future of these sectors. The SIG aims not only to increase awareness of the critical importance of services in these sectors, but also to actively stimulate technology-based and human-based service innovations.
Many potential areas for service innovation in the Energy and Power sectors exist. For example, Drs. Caldwell and Yu point out that most power systems around the world have been designed to benefit utility providers more than end-users. Current power grids supply power from large and centralized fossil fuel based stations through long-distance transmission. Decentralized energy resources and microgrid coordination for power generation, storage, and demand management have received little attention to date. Yet, these are the areas where the greatest improvements to energy and power services are possible, because decentralization of energy sources and power grids will:
- increase grid reliability and security.
- decrease power line losses by reducing transmission distances.
- improve communication, monitoring, and control, and thereby improves system management.
- lead to closer interactions with customers, which help improve service quality.
- lead to more effective utilization of renewable energy resources.
Existing regulations and grid investments remain a major challenge, because utilities are reluctant, if not adverse, to integrating distributed renewable resources and microgrids. However, the threat of global warming is constantly rising, and the need for power grid innovation is increasingly urgent. As a result, an important contribution that this SIG can make is to clearly demonstrate the economic, efficiency, reliability, and service quality advantages of distributed renewable resources and microgrids to both customer service and utility providers. The SIG aims to develop innovative and effective public education programs, system optimization tools, and incentives to all stakeholders. If you are interested in the work of the SIG, or would like to actively participate, please contact Dr. Oliver Yu.
Current members of the SIG are:
Dr. James Caldwell, President of E3 Regenesis
Dr. Robert Entreken, Senior Project Manager, Electric Power Research Institute
Dr. George Hsu, Professor of Energy Economics, National Chung-Hsin University, Taiwan
Mr. Stephen Lee, Vice President, Taiwan Power Company
Dr. Liang Min, Senior Technical Staff, Lawrence Livermore National Lab
Dr. Oliver Yu, Board Member, US-China Green Energy Council
Dr. Lin Zhang, Professor of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University