scholarly journals Energy Communities and the Tensions Between Neoliberalism and Communitarianism

2022 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Laes ◽  
Gunter Bombaerts

AbstractThe convergent development of (renewable) distributed electricity sources, storage technologies (e.g., batteries), ‘big data’ devices (e.g., sensors, smart meters), and novel ICT infrastructure matching energy supply and demand (smart grids) enables new local and collective forms of energy consumption and production. This socio-technical evolution has been accompanied by the development of citizen energy communities that have been supported by EU energy governance and directives, adopting a political narrative of placing the citizen central in the ongoing energy transition. But to what extent are the ideals that motivate the energy community movement compatible with those of neoliberalism that have guided EU energy policy for the last four decades? Using a framework inspired by Michel Foucault’s idea of governmentality, we analyze the two political forms from three dimensions: ontological, economic and power politics. For the ontological and the economic dimensions, neoliberal governmentality is flexible enough to accommodate the tensions raised by the communitarians. In the dimension of power politics however, the communitarian logic does raise a fundamental challenge to neoliberal governmentality in the sense that it explicitly aims for a redefinition of the ‘common good’ of society’s energy supply based on democratic premises.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xenia Zwanziger

In 2017, the German legislator adopted a law that provides for the digitisation of the energy sector. The dissertation deals with legal issues raised by the provisions, especially those rules concerning the equipment of consumers with smart meters. Besides regulatory issues, the author examines the legitimacy of the proposed obligatory equipment. The main thesis of the dissertation is that the justification of interventions in the rights of market players presupposes that consumers can use smart meters sensibly. Today, this is not the case, since smart grids and intelligent electricity markets are lacking. The dissertation determines that profound changes in the energy industry are necessary for smart meters to support the integration of renewable energies into the energy supply system.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 412-418
Author(s):  
Hasventhran Baskaran ◽  
Abbas M. Al-Ghaili ◽  
Zul- Azri Ibrahim ◽  
Fiza Abdul Rahim ◽  
Saravanan Muthaiyah ◽  
...  

Smart grids are the cutting-edge electric power systems that make use of the latest digital communication technologies to supply end-user electricity, but with more effective control and can completely fill end user supply and demand. Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), the backbone of smart grids, can be used to provide a range of power applications and services based on AMI data. The increased deployment of smart meters and AMI have attracted attackers to exploit smart grid vulnerabilities and try to take advantage of the AMI and smart meter’s weakness. One of the possible major attacks in the AMI environment is False Data Injection Attack (FDIA). FDIA will try to manipulate the user’s electric consumption by falsified the data supplied by the smart meter value in a smart grid system using additive and deductive attack methods to cause loss to both customers and utility providers. This paper will explore two possible attacks, the additive and deductive data falsification attack and illustrate the taxonomy of attack behaviors that results in additive and deductive attacks. This paper contributes to real smart meter datasets in order to come up with a financial impact to both energy provider and end-user.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-159
Author(s):  
Anna Kucharska

The transformation of the energy sector is one of today’s global megatrends. The main aim of this process includes shifting energy production to renewable sources, decarbonizing the economy, and improving energy efficiency, especially in the most energy-intensive sectors. These changes lead the energy sectors of different states to ensure security and maintain environmental protection in order to guarantee the civilization’s progressive development. One of the tools for the implementation and development of a new model of the energy sector is digitization, which is a direct consequence of the increasing complexity of the energy system. Digitization is an essential element in the management of smart grids and smart meters and for controlling the entire energy system, as well as guaranteeing fair distribution. The digitization process integrates the state energy system; however, it also increases its vulnerability to potential cyber-threats. The aim of this paper is to analyze the cybersecurity challenges facing the Polish power sector in light of the energy transition policy promoted in the EU with a particular focus on the latest legislation presented in the Clean Energy Package. The Polish energy sector is on the verge of structural changes; therefore the main question is: How to implement them to avoid errors? The paper provides a glimpse into the most venerable areas, which should be taken into consideration by political decision-makers.


Author(s):  
José Juan González Márquez ◽  
Margarita González Brambila

This chapter analyses the role of electricity storage as an innovative strategy to attain the Mexican Government’s goals regarding carbon dioxide emission reduction and energy transition. The survey includes the analysis of the different electricity storage technologies as well as the legal framework governing electricity storage as the fifth link of the energy supply chain from a comparative perspective. The authors discuss whether energy storage is a generation or a distribution/transmission asset. The chapter also analyses Mexico’s experiences in energy storage and briefly describes the way it is regulated in other jurisdictions. Finally, the authors propose the regulation of energy storage as a separate licensed activity.


Author(s):  
Gabriel Lefebvre-Ropars ◽  
Catherine Morency ◽  
Paula Negron-Poblete

The increasing popularity of street redesigns highlights the intense competition for street space between their different users. More and more cities around the world mention in their planning documents their intention to rebalance streets in favor of active transportation, transit, and green infrastructure. However, few efforts have managed to formalize quantifiable measurements of the balance between the different users and usages of the street. This paper proposes a method to assess the balance between the three fundamental dimensions of the street—the link, the place, and the environment—as well as a method to assess the adequation between supply and demand for the link dimension at the corridor level. A series of open and government georeferenced datasets were integrated to determine the detailed allocation of street space for 11 boroughs of the city of Montréal, Canada. Travel survey data from the 2013 Origine-Destination survey was used to model different demand profiles on these streets. The three dimensions of the street were found to be most unbalanced in the central boroughs of the city, which are also the most dense and touristic neighborhoods. A discrepancy between supply and demand for transit users and cyclists was also observed across the study area. This highlights the potential of using a distributive justice framework to approach the question of the fair distribution of street space in an urban context.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 500
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Pilo ◽  
Giuditta Pisano ◽  
Simona Ruggeri ◽  
Matteo Troncia

The energy transition for decarbonization requires consumers’ and producers’ active participation to give the power system the necessary flexibility to manage intermittency and non-programmability of renewable energy sources. The accurate knowledge of the energy demand of every single customer is crucial for accurately assessing their potential as flexibility providers. This topic gained terrific input from the widespread deployment of smart meters and the continuous development of data analytics and artificial intelligence. The paper proposes a new technique based on advanced data analytics to analyze the data registered by smart meters to associate to each customer a typical load profile (LP). Different LPs are assigned to low voltage (LV) customers belonging to nominal homogeneous category for overcoming the inaccuracy due to non-existent coincident peaks, arising by the common use of a unique LP per category. The proposed methodology, starting from two large databases, constituted by tens of thousands of customers of different categories, clusters their consumption profiles to define new representative LPs, without a priori preferring a specific clustering technique but using that one that provides better results. The paper also proposes a method for associating the proper LP to new or not monitored customers, considering only few features easily available for the distribution systems operator (DSO).


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahmoud Elsisi ◽  
Karar Mahmoud ◽  
Matti Lehtonen ◽  
Mohamed M. F. Darwish

The modern control infrastructure that manages and monitors the communication between the smart machines represents the most effective way to increase the efficiency of the industrial environment, such as smart grids. The cyber-physical systems utilize the embedded software and internet to connect and control the smart machines that are addressed by the internet of things (IoT). These cyber-physical systems are the basis of the fourth industrial revolution which is indexed by industry 4.0. In particular, industry 4.0 relies heavily on the IoT and smart sensors such as smart energy meters. The reliability and security represent the main challenges that face the industry 4.0 implementation. This paper introduces a new infrastructure based on machine learning to analyze and monitor the output data of the smart meters to investigate if this data is real data or fake. The fake data are due to the hacking and the inefficient meters. The industrial environment affects the efficiency of the meters by temperature, humidity, and noise signals. Furthermore, the proposed infrastructure validates the amount of data loss via communication channels and the internet connection. The decision tree is utilized as an effective machine learning algorithm to carry out both regression and classification for the meters’ data. The data monitoring is carried based on the industrial digital twins’ platform. The proposed infrastructure results provide a reliable and effective industrial decision that enhances the investments in industry 4.0.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (9) ◽  
pp. 2728
Author(s):  
Chun-Nan Chen ◽  
Chun-Ting Yang

The Taiwanese government has set an energy transition roadmap of 20% renewable energy supply by 2025, including a 20 GW installed PV capacity target, composed of 8 GW rooftop and 12 GW ground-mounted systems. The main trend of feed-in tariffs is downwards, having fallen by 50% over a ten-year period. Predicting the future ten-year equity internal rate of return (IRR) in this study, we examine the investability of PV systems in Taiwan when subsidies and investment costs descend. We have found that the projected subsidies scheme favours investment in small-sized PV systems. Unless the investment costs of medium-sized PV systems fall or subsidies rise over the next decade, investing in medium-sized PV systems will be less attractive. Nonlinear and linear degradation causes slight IRR differences when using higher-reliability modules.


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