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Utilities are in a tricky spot. While reliability is one of three key focus areas for utilities as they navigate the clean energy transition, along with decarbonization and affordability, it’s […]
The post Virtual Power Plants: An Untapped Resource for Improving Grid Reliability appeared first on POWER Magazine.
The U.S. transmission and distribution (T&D) network is reliable and well-maintained, but as renewable energy continues being added to the grid, and demand increases due to growing data center needs […]
The post Strengthening America’s Electric Power Grid: How the Government and Industry Are Improving T&D Systems appeared first on POWER Magazine.
The post How Artificial Intelligence Is Improving the Energy Efficiency of Buildings appeared first on POWER Magazine.
A lot of energy is consumed by buildings. In fact, the Alliance to Save Energy, a nonprofit energy efficiency advocacy group, says buildings account for about 40% of all U.S. energy consumption and a similar proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. Some estimates suggest about 45% of the energy used in commercial buildings is consumed by heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, of which, as much as 30% is often wasted.
Most power companies these days have energy efficiency programs that help customers identify waste and implement energy-saving measures, but there are also non-utility providers working on solutions. Montreal, Canada–based BrainBox AI is one of them. It’s using artificial intelligence (AI) to significantly reduce energy consumption in buildings.
“We’ve developed an autonomous artificial intelligence technology that applies to commercial buildings in order to render their heating and cooling needs, which is typically the single largest consumer of energy in a building, and to make those much more efficient and certainly much more flexible to outside demands and occupant demands,” Sam Ramadori, president of BrainBox AI, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast.…
Security issues are second only to cost concerns when energy generators consider the risks related to implementing connected technology at their power plants, according to a February 15 poll of the audience at POWER’s Connected Plant Conference.
However, continued improvements in available cybersecurity systems are quickly reducing those risks, Stan Schneider, CEO of Real-Time Innovations, told the audience in his keynote address.
“Security is a huge problem, everybody knows,” he said. “I think it’s getting better because security is a layer game.”
Using the most common security technology, such as air gap and firewalls, is not sufficient, but new technologies have the potential to greatly reduce the threat of a cybersecurity attack, according to Schneider. “If you’re dependent on fire walls, realize an insider attack easily breaches a fire wall protection. There’s just so many things that don’t work that people are dependent on for various reasons, but the new technologies [where] you can layer in different levels of security, are definitely making it better,” he said.…