Key Themes

The Smart Grids Summit 2013 multi-streamed sessions included:

Smart Cities and Regions

• Realising all the smart grid applications and smart home concepts in one city
• Integrating renewable energy sources into the smart cities grid
• Electrical vehicle charging points and testing
• Deploying Advanced Metering Infrastructures (AMIs)
• Driving innovation in energy storage
• Managing the increased level of diversity and complexity of distributed energy resources – Virtual Power Plants
• Finding the right smart grid partners and accelerating smart grid roll out

Customer Management

• Demand response management
• Creating customer value and loyalty: how to win over the customer
• Advanced metering rollout and the benefits of customer energy management
• Extending capabilities of home area networks
• Harvesting energy with help of energy aggregators and customer participation
• Enhancing customer experience

Operational excellence

• Enabling smart grid security and risk exposure
• Automation to improve reliability with real-time monitoring and intelligent control
• Advancing workflow efficiency, Customer Information Systems (CIS) and billing applications
• Minimising outages and managing ageing assets during grid modernisation

Creating ICT platforms for sustainable growth

• Interoperability and strategies needed to meet the communications demands of the smart grid
• Utilising excessive data with real time data management software
• Assessing the impact of adding smart services and new technologies into networks
• Demand side management and storage projects for network transmission balancing
• Building state-of-the-art communications infrastructure
• Aligning IT & OT implementations for a successful implementation of new technologies
• Enabling remote monitoring, real time analytics and self-healing grid capability

Microgeneration

• Implementing sustainable power and renewable energy in homes
• The extent of microgeneration’s role in Europe’s energy mix
• Building a more reliable grid by integration of decentralised renewable energy