PowerIT (IT for Implicit Interaction based Energy Management)

Throughout the world society is demanding changes to energy systems with the overriding concerns of sustainability, and environmental and economic accountability. The electricity distribution systems that serve consumers have evolved over more than a hundred years. The supply paradigm is infrastructure-driven with a model of over-provisioning to guarantee availability at all time with very rare failure. Energy users are not “in the loop”, and often not aware that a large proportion of their electricity costs are driven not by their average usage, but by the peak usage of the grid. The capacity in the supply chain for demand response is very slow,and energy providers generate significantly more energy than is actually used by the connected consumers. This supply model is based on conventional generation in large power plants that provide energy at controlled rates; it presents a major barrier for larger-scale integration of renewable energy sources that are characterised by smaller outputs, distributed generation and high intermittency dependent on localised generation conditions.