Smart Community

† Fuji Electric Co., Ltd. opment Organization (NEDO) for a period of 5 years beginning in 2003, and has amassed a proven track record for developing and evaluating “microgrid control technology” that balances the supply and demand of energy within a regional grid consisting primarily of renewable energy sources such as solar power, wind power and biomass power. Combining its accumulated advanced power grid technology with end-user power savings technology and public system technologies such as transportation and water environment technologies, Fuji Electric is currently participating in national demonstration projects and research projects relating to smart communities, and by integrating its in-house resources for various fi elds, Fuji Electric is helping to advance the development and expand the lineup of smart community products and technologies. This special issue reports on Fuji Electric’s support of these demonstration projects, product development for more advanced power grids and more highly sophisticated energy utilization by end-users in order to realize smart communities, and efforts to establish elemental technologies. This paper describes the smart communities envisioned by Fuji Electric and their associated challenges, as well as the systems for technologies and products in Fuji Electric’s smart communities. For further details, please refer to the individual papers that follow this one. 2. Trends Toward Smart Communities 2.1 Smart grids and the mass adoption of solar power generation and wind power generation With the aim of realizing a low carbon society, the increased adoption of solar power and wind power is being promoted worldwide. These unstable sources of energy, with the exception of small power supply applications such as in remote areas, are directly connected to power grids. In general, if the mass adoption of solar and wind power exceeds about 10% of the power grid supply capacity, the frequency and voltage of the power grid will become unstable and power quality problems will arise. Additionally, depending on the load pattern of the power grid, it can be expected that surplus power will be generated and adversely affect the protection and control functions of the power grid in some cases. In terms of the capacity utilization ratio of the system, the addition of large-scale equipment to the power grid-side is not always an effective way to compensate for the fl uctuations in solar and wind power generation, however. For this reason, the end-user and the power grid must be organically linked by means of information technology, and the control of the user equipment (user’s grid) and of the large-scale power grid must be coordinated. A smart grid can realize such coordinated control, and is said to be a means for solving problems when adopting large amounts of solar and wind power. Figure 1 shows the correlation between Fuji Electric’s assumption of the increase in solar and wind power generation and capital investment trends ( 1) . For the planned global spread of solar and wind power, the need for “user grids” will increase beginning in 2012, and smart grids are expected to come into widespread use as of 2017. Additionally, together with the associated capital investment, smart communities having high-level urban features are also expected to increase. 2.2 From smart grids to smart communities The populations of Asia and Africa are to increase dramatically in the future. In these regions, industrialization is progressing rapidly, especially in nations with emerging economies such as India and China, and large investments are being made for the development of industrial parks and urban development, as well as the accompanying construction of public infrastructure Fig.2 Energy infrastructure portfolio China 1,970 Mt Energy demand*1 (increasing) E xi st in g in fr as tr u ct u re * 2 ( st ro n g) E xi st in g in fr as tr u ct u re ( w ea k)