The 2010 POWERGRID Europe conference in Amsterdam June 8-10 brings together key European political and industrial figures to discuss the best way to move forward with smart meters, smart grids and a sustainable future featuring smart urban development.
Conference sessions traditionally aim at engineering solutions. While POWERGRID Europe does cover all the technologies and applications for T&D in Europe, the conference will also feature a unique smart grid vendor panel---a megasession bringing in the leaders of the vendor community to discuss what is practical and impractical with smart grid developments. The concept of a “smart grid” is so very popular as a marketing term in the industry today that just about every piece of software, every gadget and every widget calls itself beneficial to the smart grid. In this session, an array of specialists from a variety of industry vendors discusses all the parts that really make a smart grid and just what a utility needs to know to pick the right product for their growing needs in that arena. Short presentations will be followed by a longer interactive panel discussion. Panellists include: Maikel van Verseveld, smart grids Europe and Latin America lead with Accenture; Peter Johnson, VP of energy markets with Alcatel-Lucent; Larsh Johnson, chief technology officer, eMeter; Andreas Berthold-van der Molen, EMEA utility market development with Microsoft; Scott Killian worldwide director of presales solutions at Sixnet, Peter Arndt, VP with Trilliant and Marco Janssen, president of UTInnovation. Additional speakers from CapGemini, Cisco, Current Group, Oracle and Invensys have also been invited to join the discussion. If a utility manager or engineer has a question about a product, a technology or a solution, this panel is available on the first day of the conference to answer that question.
If an attendee is looking for those engineering details rather than a smart grid vendor explanation, opposite the smart grid vendor panel will be a session on modeling for future networks on Tuesday afternoon. Within the power industry, the easiest way to see the invisible—the mathematical, the theoretical, the futuristic—is to model it. This session examines the use of models to believe in items ranging from wind turbine integration to the measurements required for distribution networks. Chaired by Bill Meehan, director of utility solutions at ESRI, this session will feature papers from ABB, Current Group, Lancaster University in the UK and Wartsila Finland.
During the second part of the smart grid vendor panel megasession, attendees will have another session choice running concurrent—a look at network stability. Advancing the grid of the future requires work with today’s network and improvements in the areas that keep all the parts in good order. This session will give both theoretical and practical perspectives on reliability, monitoring and control.Chaired by Edward Coster, senior specialist asset management with Stedin, this session will feature papers from the University of Stuttgart, EFACEC and Siemens.
Wednesday, June 9 begins with two megasessions, one on interoperability and the other on what the POWERGRID Europe committee deemed “grid evolution.”
As projects grow and interconnect, the technology involved must be able to adapt. Unfortunately, though, the concept of a single set of international interoperability standards remains elusive. The interoperability session discusses the future of standards and how to coordinate the grid until we reach the “single set” goal. Chaired by Eric Lambért, project manager with EDF Electricite de France R&D and Heiko Englert, head of standardization & regulation management with Siemens AG, Energy Automation in Germany, this session will feature papers from vendors like Landis+Gyr to statistics and knowledge experts like the IEC to research associations like FGH e.V. and OFFIS.
Running concurrently with the interoperability session will be the grid evolution session. There is no immediate way to get from the network of today to the grid of the future without a bit of slow and steady progress---a bit of evolving. This session examines the practical and immediate ways the industry is moving forward in its efforts to grow a stronger grid. Chaired by Richard Charnah, technology director, with Areva T&D and Claes Rytoft, senior vice president with ABB Power System, this session will feature papers from Newton-Evans Research Company, Pro Integris and HEP OPS in Croatia, IBM, the College of Electrical Engineering in China, the DG Joint Research Centre at the European Commission, the ENTSO-E, and Energynautics GmbH.
After the joint plenary session on Wednesday, June 9, POWERGRID Europe sessions will continue with two shorter discussions on information technology in modern power grids and on the grid integration of renewables, which is one way to lay the groundwork for a sustainable energy future.
Information technology (IT) is the “smart” in smart grids. Modern utilities rely heavily on IT interconnections and advancements for everything from predicting markets to tracking consumer data. The session on the role of information technology in power grids looks at four different aspects of IT and the grid, from geographic systems to substations and from protocols to microgrids. Chaired by Peter Moray, director of the European UTC in Belgium, this session will feature papers from ESRI, Areva T&D, Red Eléctrica de España and Alstom.
The practicalities of connection distributed generation like renewables to current T&D system require significant thought. The grid intergration of renewables session looks at both the generation and use of renewable sources across the power grid. Chaired by Marco Janssen, president and CEO of UTInnovation, this session will feature papers from 50Hertz Transmission (formerly Vattenfall Transmission), BPL Global, the EDISON/AIDA project leader from IBM and KEMA.
The final day of POWERGRID Europe features two megasessions running concurrently: smart cities and transmission challenges. While we need the final goal of smart cities, it will take a lot of work tackling transmission challenges to make it to a sustainable energy lifestyle.
Smart grids are a start, but smart cities remain the ultimate goal. The smart cities session reviews a number of smart city projects from retrofitting parts of Amsterdam’s grid to completing a city from scratch with Masdar. Each city will be discussed in a presentation followed by a long group panel discussion where the audience is invited to ask questions of the experts to see how the lessons learned with these projects can be applied to every city. Chaired by Pallas Agterberg, director of strategy & innovation with Alliander, this session will feature papers from Accenture, Amsterdam Innovation Motor, Fortum Power and Heat AB, transmission association the ENTSO-E, Masdar and the European Commission’s Information Society. For an overview of every angle of a smart city, this session is the place to be for the details.
Everyone talks about the power behind the smart grid today, but, in the end, we can’t have all the wonders at the consumer end without a robust transmission system. The transmission challenges session discusses how to keep the transmission side of the equation operating smoothly. Chaired by Charles W. Newton, president of Newton-Evans Research Company, this session will feature papers from TenneT, KEC International Ltd., ABB, HEP-Transmission System, Prysmian S.p.A., Zagreb, and E D SE PTI NC in Germany.
POWERGRID Europe offers all the traditional elements of a good conference, including fabulous networking opportunities, great papers with engineering detail and an extensive exhibit floor. Additionally, however, POWERGRID Europe continues to expand in unique directions that cover the immediate issues of the day (in the smart grid vendor panel and the grid evolution sessions) and the issues of the future (with renewables and smart cities). Featuring industry know speakers from vendors to utilities, regulators to innovators, POWERGRID Europe covers every angle of the T&D industry in Europe.
As the conference director of POWERGRID Europe, I hope to see you there.
More information at: www.powergrideurope.com
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