GREEN AGH CAMPUS

Tomasz Szmuc

, Leszek Kotulski

, Bartosz Wojszczyk

and Adam Se¸dziwy

AGH University of Science and Technology, Department of Automatics, al. Mickiewicza 30, 30-059 Krak´ow, Poland

GE Energy, Atlanta, U.S.A.

Keywords:

Green AGH Campus, Smart Grid, Intelligent Lighting.

Abstract:

Smart grid systems are the response for the growing global energy demand and the environment protection

concerns. To obtain all proﬁts from a smart grid solution, its development has to rely on technical issues

but also on an active participation of a system end users. In this paper we present an overview of the Green

AGH Campus project which is based on advanced technologies tested in other similar projects. Its innovation

is combining the role of a fully functional smart grid solution with educational features and the potential of

replicating obtained results in other environments. The intelligent lighting system is also discussed as the most

developed part of the Green AGH Campus.

1 INTRODUCTION

The Green AGH Campus smart grid project was

started by a consortium which initially consists of

AGH University of Science and Technology, General

Electric Energy and Marshal’s Ofﬁce of the Malopol-

ska Region. Members of the consortium represent

academia, research, development, industry and mu-

nicipality.

AGH University of Science and Technology is

the leading Polish technical university (Webometrics,

2012) with 38,000 students of nearly 200 specialties

within 50 disciplines. Its graduates work in the elec-

tronics and telecommunications industry, companies

designing and installing systems and computer net-

works, making equipment for large corporations, e.g.

automatics and robotics systems or specialized mea-

suring and medical equipment, also in ﬁrms offering

new telecommunications services, such as multime-

dia communication systems. (AGH UST, 2012)

The proﬁle of the University and careers of its

graduates make us expect that starting the Green AGH

Campus project for educational goals will propagate

positive attitudes toward energy usage and manage-

ment among professionals.

General Electric Energy being the part of GE com-

pany consists of the following divisions: Energy Ser-

vices, GE Oil & Gas and GE Power & Water. It is

active in such areas as energy production, distribution

and management, renewable energy sources or the re-

utilization of water. The GE Energy, which partici-

pated in numerous smart grid projects, ensures tech-

nological background of the project.

The Marshal’s Ofﬁce of the Malopolska Region

being the third partner of the project, represents mu-

nicipal organizational units. Its experience will allow

to migrate the Green AGH Campus as a scalable solu-

tion to other communities interested in achieving eco-

nomic proﬁts.

2 SMART GRID PROJECT

EXAMPLES

Growing global energy demand and associated

growth in energy prices but also planned reduction

of CO

emission stimulate development of the range

of methodologies and technologies related to energy

production and distribution.

Smart grids which are oriented for those goals al-

low achieving them by reducing energy usage, obtain-

ing energy from renewable sources, developing en-

ergy storage methods or linking small suppliers to the

energy grid. The following proof of concepts regard-

ing smart grid solutions should be presented here.

Amsterdam Smart City which includes multi-

ple initiatives like West Orange (400 households with

new energy management systems), Climate Street

(smart meters and plugs, energy saving lighting) or

ITO Tower (sensor-based lighting, heating, cooling,

smart plugs).

159

Szmuc T., Kotulski L., Wojszczyk B. and S˛edziwy A..

GREEN AGH CAMPUS.

DOI: 10.5220/0003979101590162

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Smart Grids and Green IT Systems (SMARTGREENS-2012), pages 159-162

ISBN: 978-989-8565-09-9

 2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

The GE smart grid demonstration project on Maui

Island, Hawaii, based on the U.S. Clean EnergyTech-

nologies Action Plan. Key objectives of the project

include effective management of renewable gener-

ation based on a distribution management system

(DMS) platform, demand response and integration of

energy storage.

BedZED in Hackbridge, London, England. The

general assumption underlying this housing develop-

ment was using renewable energy only, produced on

site by solar panels or co-generation plant. Addi-

tionally the energy efﬁcient materials and technolo-

gies were applied. All energy saving steps reduced

the power usage by 25% compared to the average for

United Kingdom.

3 GREEN AGH CAMPUS

In the Green AGH Campus project we would like

to adopt best practices applied in developing exist-

ing smart grid projects. We will focus on developing

methods that will promote effectively smart grid solu-

tions in environments for cities or larger regions. Two

barriers may be identiﬁed here:

1. the lack of professionals who can create such so-

lutions,

2. the lack of a public demand for their implementa-

tion (mainly due to the weak awareness of poten-

tial beneﬁts).

Localization of the project at the university campus

solves both problems as it is explained later on.

Our basic goal is to prepare the environment

which allows both researching (in terms of using

modern energy technologies) and demonstrating it to

students in the real micro-world.

So-called control room enables us to research

modern solutions including integrated approaches to:

• energy efﬁciency and application of low emis-

sion technologies (e.g. renewable energy sources,

electric vehicles, etc.),

• optimal management of an integrated system and

technologies for creating NegaWatt zones,

• combining technical/economic value and the end

user,

• transforming managed data into information ap-

plicable in an effective management of advanced

NegaWatt functions and moving clients from

the consumer role to the prosumer (producer-

consumer) one,

• cooperation with DSO’s for the active participa-

tion in the energy market,

• knowledge exchange, testing modern solutions

and optimizing-operational processes,

• broadly deﬁned intelligent networks (creating

sand-boxes), and the work management and op-

timization,

• power grids with active (controllable) generation

and customer load.

The overall architecture concept will be based on

scalability, interoperability and availability through

open-standard design and common information

model (CIM) based integration.

The control room is an essential element of the

teaching process at our university. The idea of this

system is based on two optimization subsystems. The

ﬁrst one, incorporating the concept of DMS-based

shadow environment (Fig.1), will optimize costs of

energy consumed while keeping the maximum level

of the energy reliability and security. The second sub-

system is focused on the optimization of the energy

consumption by local entities like student dormito-

ries, didactic buildings or outdoor lighting.

The data gathered from the system will be used

as an input for simulations which, will allow students

who explore smart grid solutions, to discover conse-

quences of control decisions made by them.

The solution development will rely on intelligent

management systems (DMS), monitoring (smart me-

ters) and automatics which cover smart buildings, in-

telligent lighting systems, energy storage, control-

lable energy receivers and so on. Besides the con-

ventional energy sources, combined heat and power

(CHP) and photovoltaic (PV) technologies will be

used. Green AGH Campus components will be in-

tegrated using electrical grid and computer network

(HAN/LAN) which enable remote monitoring, con-

trol, securing and other tasks.

Initially six buildings are designed to be cov-

ered by the project: four dormitories, one smart grid

compliant university building and the swimming pool

complex. Additionally the outdoor lighting is as-

sumed to be the component of the smart grid as well.

Each dormitory will be equipped with a building

management system (BMS) supporting both energy

service and detailed accounting of energy consumers.

The new idea is to develop the dedicated customer

relations management (CRM) system that will teach

users how to save the energy and/or decrease a hous-

ing fee. Learning the economic energy management

generates not only temporary effects (i.e. current sav-

ings), but also long term ones. Let us notice that dor-

mitory residents leave it after a few years, and next

they may become natural ambassadors of the smart

grid technology. This perspective gives the hope to

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break the mentioned second barrier of the smart grid

technology development.

It should be remarked that the swimming pool

may play yet another role in the project besides being

the next building incorporated into the Green AGH

Campus, namely it may be used as an energy storage.

The lighting system of Green AGH Campus will

be designed to meet the following two requirements:

improving public safety and decrease the operational

costs. This part of the project as the most matured

part of the solution will be discussed in more detail in

the next section.

In this project we have paid the special attention

to computer systems which are used to both intelli-

gently control system’s behavior and gather data con-

cerning processes being performed. Obtained infor-

mation will be stored in data repositories which allow

data mining. That will help improving quality of the

smart grid system control. Selected parts of those data

will be distributed to third parties which can simulate

and verify the possibility of applying some smart grid

sub-solutions in their environments. Thus the second

goal of the Green AGH Campus project, i.e. establish-

ing scalable, interoperable platform enabling energy

suppliers integration, will be achieved. The system

scalability allows future Green AGH Campus growth

and, on the other side, adapting it to other environ-

ments. The important feature is the system accessi-

bility which will be accomplished by minimizing in-

vestment costs, making the solution be within reach

of potential investors. It is planned to replicate the

solutions tested in the project in other local govern-

ment units. The main objective is to optimize energy

management.

Expected added values of the Green AGH Campus

solution are:

• improved safety of the system and the people,

achieved by implementing intelligent, reactive

systems of control and monitoring,

• effectiveness and lower exploitation costs

achieved by intelligent power control, energy

saving technologies but also by changing users

attitudes,

• environmental protection achieved by using envi-

ronment friendly technologies (e.g. LED lamps)

and renewable energy sources and by decreasing

the power consumption.

4 LIGHTING

The intelligent lighting system (ILS) is the important

element of the Green AGH Campus. The ILS aim

is twofold: increasing the quality of public spaces in

particular by improving the personal safety and de-

creasing exploitation costs related to the illumination.

The ﬁrst goal may be accomplished by analysis of

a behavior of inhabitants e.g. using models describ-

ing the dynamics of pedestrians (Wa¸s, 2010). Re-

sults of such an analysis allow for correlating ILS per-

formance with expected behaviors of pedestrians and

preparing predeﬁned lighting proﬁles suited for vari-

ous environment states. Decreased illumination costs,

being the second objective, is achieved by using en-

ergy saving technologies (e.g. light emitting diode -

LED) and intelligent control adapting the system per-

formance to actual needs.

The LED technology creates possibility for

preparing lighting solutions satisfying design require-

ments and standards (Institution of Lighting Engi-

neers, 2005) and on the other side capable of adapting

to changing conditions of an environment. Taking the

advantage of the second property may impact an en-

ergy consumption and related costs.

Managing the intelligent lighting system includes

two aspects: 1) preparing a suitable distribution of

lamps and 2) providing an intelligent control of a sys-

tem. Both questions addressed below.

A primary objective of a light designer is secur-

ing the illumination of public spaces at the night time

as well as preserving the energy efﬁciency and econ-

omy of solutions so that staying and moving in these

spaces could be safe and comfortable. The basic goal

of an artiﬁcial illumination in the urban area is to

guarantee its safe usage and supporting the space ori-

entation.

A lighting design process is constrained by ar-

chitectural assumptions related either to aesthetic or

functional demands, compulsory standards like EN

13201 or CIE 115:2008 and implied energy con-

sumption (e.g. see (Institution of Lighting Engineers,

2005)). The ﬁrst constraint takes into account such is-

sues as the safety of the people or enhancing the ori-

entation ability in an urban space. The second one

deﬁnes requested properties of an illuminated area. It

should be remarked that such a characteristic is given

by a set of lighting proﬁles corresponding to vari-

ant validations of predeﬁned conﬁgurations of such

parameters as daylight level, actual trafﬁc intensity,

weather conditions and so on (Fig. 2).

The ILS control acts based on data received from

sensors and on a selected lighting proﬁle.

The common issue related to both the design and

the control of the ILS is their high computational

complexity. The simple example illustrating the prob-

lem’s order of magnitude is the number of possible

GREENAGHCAMPUS

161

Figure 1: Example of localized control system ”Shadow Environment”.

Figure 2: Exemplary city area with corresponding lighting

proﬁles.

states for a row of ten LED luminaries when each

lamp may work at ten luminosity levels. Such a sys-

tem may take 10

states.

To overcome the computational complexity re-

lated problems a formal representation of a system

has to be introduced. A graph model of an urban

space coupled with distributed, agent-based compu-

tations paradigm are applied (see (Se¸dziwy and Ko-

tulski, 2011)). The control system is supported by

distributed rule based Artiﬁcial Intelligence systems.

5 CONCLUSIONS

The Green AGH Campus combines the most inno-

vative smart grid solutions tested in other existing

implementations with the educational features of the

university. The preliminary analysis of the ﬁrst phase

of the project (in particular development of the light-

ing system) shows that the system complexity forces

using advanced computer science technology based

on Artiﬁcial Intelligence. On the other side these

AI-based methods support scalability of the system.

Scalability and open-standard design of the solution

will enable its replication to other environments.

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AGH UST (2012). AGH UST - facts and ﬁgures.

http://www.agh.edu.pl/en/university/about-us/agh-ust-

facts-and-ﬁgures.html.

Institution of Lighting Engineers (2005). Outdoor Lighting

Guide. Routledge, 1st edition.

Se¸dziwy, A. and Kotulski, L. (2011). Solving large-scale

multipoint lighting design problem using multi-agent

environment. Key Engineering Materials, 486:197–

182.

Wa¸s, J. (2010). Crowd dynamics modeling in the light of

proxemic theories. In Proceedings of the 10th in-

ternational conference on Artiﬁcal intelligence and

soft computing: Part II, ICAISC’10, pages 683–688,

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Webometrics (2012). Ranking of World Universities, Jan-

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