What do smart cities really mean to China?

The guest lecturer discussed some interesting topics on smart cities covering where smart cities come from, how it works and whether we live smart enough? As Brian mentions, with the development of the smart technologies, are we becoming smart enough? In the lecture, I connected the thought with China by asking whether China is becoming smart now?

The first question I can imagine is the fast economy development. With the largest economic goal, whether building smart cities can simplify the miscellaneous economic development? In the progress of building smart cities, we want everything, including industry, agriculture, becomes smarter. Thus, with the establishment of smart cities, will this be helpful for China to change the economic structure in the future?

Secondly, what do smart cities mean for citizens in China? Discussing China’s smart cities is based on the bottom down approach and this approach lacks the consideration of Public participation. Also we need to clarify if the public here means all population in China? China takes the largest population in the world. Does building smart cities mean letting all the population’s lives become smart? According to Stuart (2015), 13% of China’s population falls below the poverty line. So, whether in the progress of building smart cities ignore this part population’s benefit? Or whether establishing smart cities can bring this part of population to smart lives?

Thirdly, we insist on the ecological sustainability and this is also the target of establishing smart cities. However, in terms of China, will this retard China’s economic development progress in a short time? According to the emission reduction target for China, China requires to reduce at least 35% emission compared with 2005 at Paris climate change summit (Duggan, 2015). Thus, under these circumstances, whether China’s economy development will be retarded?

As a consequence, proposing the slogan of building smart cities in China is easy, but how to put it into practice and to make every aspect integrated together is difficult.

 

References:

Stuart, Elizabeth, 2015, China has almost wiped out urban poverty. Now it must tackle inequality, Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2015/aug/19/china-poverty-inequality-development-goals, Accessed on 6^th, October 2016.

Duggan, Jennifer, 2015, China makes carbon pledge ahead of Paris climate change summit, Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/30/china-carbon-emissions-2030-premier-li-keqiang-un-paris-climate-change-summit, Accessed on 6^th, October 2016.

China’s White Paper on the Standardisation of Building Smart Cities

In 2013, China’s Electronics Standardisation Institute published the white paper on the standardisation of establishing smart cities. In this paper, it concluded the current situation of the global and domestic development of smart cities. It explicitly mentions compare with the western countries; China has a long way to go, and it does give a series of actions to respond. For example, it encourages the development of Internet of things, such as improving the technologies of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Sensor and embedded technique. Beside of this, it stipulates the usage of data resources by updating, sharing, communicating and analysis to achieve the standardisation of building smart cities. Not only the above, it clearly illustrates the government functions in progress and how the government needs to be considered in the future.

However, it can be found that something was missing in the white paper. That is how to deal with the people, how to improve the public participation in the progress. Without the citizen engagement, what is the specific intention of building smart cities? Increasing the investment and developing technologies seems like the hard infrastructure, while public participation is the soft power to support and provide the directions for building smart cities in the future.

A figure，which is a summary of the results from the assessment of the pilot smart cities shows the different between China and EU. It can be seen that the average level of maturity on stakeholders of China is 60%, which is much higher than in EU (10%). While, in terms of governance, China is 7% compare with EU, 20%. That is to say, in the western countries, many smart cities, especially in the EU, have implemented mechanisms such as developing a “public, private and people partnership” approach in engaging, encouraging and empowering citizens to be more involved in the development of their city modernization and smart city plans (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, 2014). This exactly matched what we learned in the class regarding bottom up and top down approaches when discussing smart cities.

Figure 1: Summary of the Results from the Assessment of the Pilot Smart Cities (White Paper on Comparative Study of Smart Cities in Europe and China, 2016)

Reference

China’s Electronics Standardization Institute, 2013, White Paper of the Standardization of Building Smart Cities in China, Electronics Standardization Institute: Beijing.

Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), 2014, EU-China Smart and Green City Cooperation: White Paper on Comparative Study of Smart Cities in Europe and China, Available from: http://euchina-ict.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/SmartCityreportdraft-White-Paper--March-2014.pdf, Accessed on 30th October, 2016

Beyond the government, how can we do to respond smart grids?

Beyond the government, how can we do to response smart grids?

As urbanisation accelerates, the developed countries begin to study how to use innovative information technology, knowledge, and intelligence technology to re-examine a series of fundamental problems in the development of modern cities, such as nature of the city, urban functions, adjustment of the urban structure, and city image (Zhang 2011) this urges China to reconsider how to change? Thus, the Chinese government promoted to develop smart cities as the western countries did and As Thompson (2016) mentions by September 2013 total of 311 cities in China have proposed or are embarking on smart city developments, including all cities above the sub-provincial level, 89% cities at the prefectural level and above, and 47% cities at the country level and above. However, smart cities in China are more focused on the technological issues and pay less attention to the innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship, en- acted by smart people (Li, Lin and Geertman, 2015). That is to say, China’s current major approach mainly focus on the ‘top down’ in dealing with smart cities.

Thus, concerning smart grids, which related to smart cities, the government also plays a determinant role in the process. Under the circumstances of that China has become the largest consumer of electricity in the world, and it is expected to double its demand for electricity by the next decade and triple by 2035 (IEA, 2013). For example, the Chinese government has already been increasing investment into smart grid technology to respond to the national demand that is expected to double in 10 years (Hart, 2011).

Consequently, under this situation which the policies, technologies, investments take leading positions, it is hard to achieve real smart cities because the government always determine the rule of the game. In other words, not only China but also the other developing countries, such as India, have a large population, how should they deal with the public when establishing smart cities or we can ask how to manage the relations between public participation? As Yang, Clery and Di Liello (2015) explains, the target of building smart cities is to create a modern city environment, which serves to make its citizens comfortable and happy. However, the large population and income gap caused a series of challenges, such as in education, healthcare, employment and housing issues. As Yang, Clery and Di Liello (2015) continuously demonstrate, a smart city should bear in mind the problem-solving and people-focused nature of the development rather than focusing on the design and integration of intelligent equipment into the urban environment, which has little real value to residents. Thus, that is what China should borrow from ‘bottom up’ countries. Coming back to the topic of smart grids, only developing technologies and increasing investment is far enough, the fundament consideration is to increase the public participation to make the public using experience better.

Reference

Hart, Melanie, 2011, China Pours Money into Smart Grid Technology: Beijing Upgrades Smart Grid Development to Strategic National Priority, Challenging the United States, Center for American Progress, Available from: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/reports/2011/10/24/10473/china-pours-money-into-smart-grid-technology/, Accessed on 27th October, 2016

Yang, K, Clery, A and Di Liello, D, 2015, Sector Report Smart Cities in China, The EU SME Centre and China-British Business Council, Available from: http://www.cbbc.org/cbbc/media/cbbcmedia/KnowledgeLibrary/Reports/EU-SME-Centre-Report-Smart-Cities-in-China-Jan-2016.pdf, Accessed on 27th October, 2016

Zhang, Y. (2011). ‘Overall Plan of Smart City’, China Information Times, Vol 171(3), 12–21.

Thompson, E, M. (2016),‘Smart City: Adding to the Complexity of Cities: A Critical Reflection’, Towards Smarter Cities | Concepts and Strategies, Vol 1,651-660

IEA, 2013, World Energy Outlook Factsheet: How will global energy markets evolve to 2035? Available from: http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/factsheets/weo2013factsheets.pdf, Accessed on 28th October, 2016

Smart Grids Apps

 

Every day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data and 90% of the data in the world today has
been created in the last two years alone (Hudson-Smith, 2014). In that way, what can these data be applied and how can it reshape our city? As Batty (2016) explains, “big data is everywhere, largely generated by automated systems operating in real time that potentially tell us how cities are performing and changing, Once data is released it can be collated and analyzed, enabling the visualization of patterns and complexity across space and time”. That is to say, from networked objects through to the movement patterns of a crowd, emotions and criminal activities, the ability to tag and track changes how we view the city.

We living in the city with new technology and information sharing, different kinds of interests and troubles we may meet everyday. However, mining social networks through key words and applying sentiment analysis, linked to location, can possibly gauge the mood of a city and to predict where and when future unrest could occur. Currently, more and more online apps were designed for different purposes. We can use these apps to choose restaurant, find nearest ATM, and the nearest transport form one location to another even if we have been never there before. As we have the discussion on the seminar and found there really are a lot of apps, which significantly changed our lives, such as the app for online shopping which means we do not need to go to the physical shop but still receive the products and saved more time. Or some satellite navigation apps can provide the convenient traffic information through different satellite sensors. In terms of the smart grids app, how does it work?

 

(Picture is from Lane, 2014)

Through the app, we can adjust the heating, room temperature, as we want without any time and location consideration or compare with different offers with the utility bills in order to choose the most suitable energy plan for the family.

Consequently, it will be normal for people to check what their homes is doing in real time as well as long time in terms of energy consumption. As Lombardi (2011) mentions, people will manually change or set long-term view preferences for how and when they want their appliances, electronics, and home to consume electricity.

At the same time, in terms of the smart grids app applied in the UK, British Gas is the pioneer in this field. Its smart metering system offers smart metering app cross major mobile OS platforms including iOS and Android. The customer satisfaction has been 53% higher when comparing with the standard meters users (Gye, 2015). Yes, it sounds good. However, does this mean the user data was being sent without encryption, meaning that hackers could have tapped in to customers’ Wi-Fi and stolen their information. In other words, this suggests that the thieves may know when the homeowner is at home and out. This is a big challenge for security issue. Although, British Gas has agreed to start encrypting the data, in a bid to reassure customers that there personal information will remain safe.

Thus, the concept of all types of app are good, it can significantly provide convenience in our daily lives, but at the same time, it’s inevitable for us to consider a series of questions, such as data privacy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References:

Hudson‐Smith, A. 2014, “Tracking, Tagging and Scanning the City”, Architectural Design, 84(1), 40-47.

Lombardi, Candace, 2011, Report: Smart-grid apps to revolutionize electricity use, Available from: https://www.cnet.com/news/report-smart-grid-apps-to-revolutionize-electricity-use/ Accessed on 24 October, 2016

Gye Hugo, 2015, British Gas are forced to change their so-called smart heating app used in thousands of homes after it was exposed as a ‘burglar’s dream’, Mailonline, available from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3203379/British-Gas-forced-change-called-smart-heating-app.html, accessed on 21 October, 2016

Lane, Alex, 2014, British Gas and Google have brought smart heating control out of the shadows, but which of the eight systems currently on the market do we like the most?, Available from: https://recombu.com/digital/article/smart-energy-systems-nest-hive-evohome-heat-genius-owl-tado-salus-it500-cosy_M13058.html#, Accessed on 22 October, 2016.

Batty, Michael,2016,” Big Data and the City”, Bulit Environment 42(3), 321-337

Who can protect our data?

 

“As a general matter, I believe that self-regulation, implemented in conjunction with key stakeholders, can be an effective strategy for protecting customer privacy. For example, McGraw Hill, like many companies, also belongs to a number of trade associations, many of which maintain privacy guidelines with which members must comply. It is simply not in any company’s best interest to not regulate itself in privacy matters”——————interview to Cindy Braddon

 

According to this logic, it sounds that the energy company can protect the personal data for the customers due to the professional manners. But how did our personal data leaked? Who can guarantee our information will not revealed by the third parties? Why we always received different kind of advertisements and unknown calls from different companies? Who revealed our information? According to the data from CIFAS National Fraud Database, there is 49.1% identity fraud, which accounts the first in all frauds records. What does this shows us? Our personal information is being breached seriously. In the other words, every time we type or fill in our information online may cause our information is shared with third parties.

 

Almost half of all fraud last year was identity fraud, CIFAS and Experian revealed (Source: CIFAS)

 

As a result, in my opinion, the application of the data protection still requires the enforcement from the government. Take UK as an example, the latest law of data protection is the Data Protection Act 1998. This act mentioned, “ Personal data should be processed fairly and lawful and should be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes” and “Personal data shall be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date”. In this act, it indeed noticed personal’s data should be protected and kept up to date. However, it is quite difficult to determine whether it is on the right way to produce this protection? Because our technology is continuously updated, it is difficult for the government to make the relevant response and modify the law. Under this situation, the protection calls for different efforts from every party, such as companies, customers, governments, and even the third parties.

 

 

 

References.

Data Protection Act 1998, Available from: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/29/pdfs/ukpga_19980029_en.pdf, Accessed on 15th Oct 2016

 

Braddon, Cynthia, 2013, Companies can Protect Consumers Data Privacy Better than Laws,

Available from: http://fleishmanhillard.com/2013/09/true/companies-can-protect-consumer-data-privacy-better-than-laws/ Accessed on: 17^th October, 2016

 

Straus, Rachel, 2014, Fraudsters’ five most wanted items: We reveal the personal information scammers would do anything to get hold of – and the places they love to hit, Available from:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2572779/Fraudsters-5-wanted-The-titbits-info-scammers-after.html Accessed on 17th October, 2016

 

Are you considered your privacy in smart grids

As early as in the 2007, when the Dutch government announced that all 7 million homes in the Netherlands would be equipped with smart meters by 2013, it anticipated little resistance. After all, who wouldn’t welcome a device that could save both energy and money? But consumers worried that such intelligent monitoring devices, which transmit power-usage information to the utility as frequently as every 15 minutes, would make them vulnerable to thieves, annoying marketers, and police investigations. They spoke out so strongly against these ”espionage meters” that the government made them optional. (Bleicher, 2010)

 

(Picture is from:

Are you concerned about your privacy in Smart Grid?

The above news is not least, but it suggests the worries on the data sharing of the public. Similar situation happened in 2015, the Department of Energy published a voluntary code of conduct governing data privacy for smart meters, 38 million of which have already been installed nationwide (Perera, 2015). Thus, the usage of the data can be transmited by sensors and this can be harmful to public privacy. Home is significantly private for us and if we share our data with the energy suppliers, will this be safe? Or will they share our data with the other third parties?

Consequently, whether the wide usage of big data is good and how to protect our own privacy are two essential and inevitable questions that we need to consider when building smart cities. Although, the US Department of Energy (DoE) is betting on a voluntary set of standards to guide privacy practices within the smart grid industry (Vijayan, 2014), and several states have enacted smart meter data privacy rules and guidelines via either statute or regulatory proceeding (Zummo, 2014). So far, no specific laws can be counted on to protect consumers’ utility data as smart meters are rolled out across the world. Thus, it is necessary to enact relevant laws to protect the customers’ privacy. Here raises another question: how should the government do in order to solve this problem?

 

 

References

Bleicher, Ariel, 2010, Privacy on the Smart Grid: Are smart meters spies? They don’t have to be, Available from: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/privacy-on-the-smart-grid, Accessed on 13^th October 2016

Perera, David, 2015, Smart Grid Powers up privacy worries, available from: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/energy-electricity-data-use-113901, Accessed on: 13^th October, 2016

Vijayan, Jia, 2014, DoE Preps Privacy Standards For Smart Grid, Available from：http://www.informationweek.com/government/cybersecurity/doe-preps-privacy-standards-for-smart-grid/d/d-id/1316149，Accessed on: 13^th October, 2016

Zummo, Paul, 2014, Smart Grid Data Privacy Concerns: An Overview of Recommended Guidelines, Available from: http://www.publicpower.org/files/images/BookStore/APPA_Privacy_Concerns_guidelines.pdf.pdf, accessed on 13^th October 2016

 

Smart Grid in London

The smart meter trials, being led by EDF Energy, are part of Low Carbon London, a consortium of partners led by UK Power Networks funded by £24.9million from Ofgem’s Low Carbon Networks Fund, plus £4.6million from the electricity network operator. (Arnett,2012)

The Government says consumers will bear approximately £240-per household cost of installing smart meters but will recoup most of their outlay. But as stated by the Independent, the PAC’s report doubts whether the smart meters will reduce energy consumption by much and says the installation costs will hit poorer consumers especially hard (LVSC,2014)

Then, the question here is: whether we get what we paid for?

The UK Government’s much-lauded ‘smart meter’ home energy project is so far behind schedule that it should be scrapped altogether, according to one of Britain’s leading think tanks. Following the news that only 2.3 million energy smart meters have been installed in UK homes, the Institute of Directors (IoD) has today said that the scheme, reported to be costing around £11bn, will bring little benefits to customers. (Moore, 2016)

In addition, scepticism and concerns over privacy, safety and health can also slow down the roll out of smart meters. For example, consumer advocacy groups assert that smart meters emit harmful radiofrequency waves. Regarding of privacy, how energy use data is stored, accessed, maintained and used is another issue against the introduction of smart meters. (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 2013)

In conclusion, Smart Grids, without any doubt, will bring many benefits to customers and relative organisations. However, replacing the existing meters in London with smart meters will be the biggest barrier on the journey to achieve Smart Grids.

Moore, M, 2016, UK Smart Meters Rollout ‘Must Be Stopped’, Available at: http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/e-innovation/green-it/uk-smart-meters-rollout-stopped-188967, Accessed on 9th October 2016

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 2013,The Smart City Market: Opportunities for the UK, Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/249423/bis-13-1217-smart-city-market-opportunties-uk.pdf, Accessed on 9th October 2016

Arnett, M, 2012, London smart meter trial launched, Available from: http://innovation.ukpowernetworks.co.uk/innovation/en/press-releases/press-releases/London-smart-meter-trial-launched.htm, Accessed on 9th Sep, 2016

LVSC, 2014, Smart metering: what is the impact on local communities in London and the voluntary & community sector that supports them? Available from: http://www.lvsc.org.uk/media/158212/smart%20metering%20briefing%20final%20200913.pdf, Accessed on 9th Sep, 2016

Smart Grids in Austin

People have seen the power and benefits of Smart Grids and therefore, many cities around the world have announced plans to deploy smart meters. Austin is one of the cities whose Smart Grid project have completed while others are just getting started.

Pecan Street Project

Pecan Street Project is a collaboration of Austin Energy, University of Texas, Environmental Defence Fund, Greater Austin Chamber, City of Austin and Technology Advisory Committee. Its main aims are to lower utility bills, to reduce greenhouse gasses, to improve power quality and reliability and to increase power supply efficiency. This project was established in 2009 and by 2013, it has achieved many milestones, such as deploying utility side system in 2012.

Recently, its “dynamic and evolving” Smart Grid includes:

• More than 1 million consumers and 5,000 businesses
• 440 square mile service area
• 500,000 hardware devices including meters, computers and servers
• Almost 12,000 miles of transmission and distribution line
• 68 substations

No doubt the project pushed the city of Austin to be one of the pioneers on the journey to Smart City. As Lantero (2014) pointed out, apart from the benefits that the project claims, there is one another essential benefits that the project brought. The utility company or third parties can use the real-time data to analyse how different factors, such as weather, affect energy use and predict future figure.

Lantero(2014) also mentioned that Smart Grid can also make customers’ energy bill lower or even negative. However, as Jenny(2016) says, even if customers can sell unused energy back to electricity plants, the retail rate is roughly 73% higher than the wholesale rate, which means it may cost people much more to buy than to sell. This issue may be resolved by new technologies that may increase the efficiency of solar panel.

Smart Grid 2.0

With the success of the Pecan Street Project, the Smart Grid 2.0 is on its way. As Carvello (2009) notes, Smart Grid 2.0 in Austin will fully concentrate on answering one question: “What happens to the smart grid beyond the meter and into the premises, the homes, factories and businesses?”

Conclusion

Without any doubt, Austin is on its journey to Smart Grids system to achieve those benefits it claimed and the ultimate success must require a mature collaboration between technology, workforce, market&business models and policies. Hope Austin can figure out a way to integrate those elements for themselves and for the rest of the world.

References

Carvallo, A., 2009, Austin Energy Delivers First Smart Grid in the US, Available from: http://www.electricenergyonline.com/show_article.php?article=451, Accessed on 9th Oct 2016

Jenny, T., 2016, The Dark Side Of State Solar-Power Handouts, Available from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/08/17/the-dark-side-of-state-solar-power-handouts/#533e883a1ea2, Accessed on 10th Oct 2016

Lantero, A., 2014, Smart Grid Project Saves Money and Energy in Texas,Available from: http://energy.gov/articles/smart-grid-project-saves-money-and-energy-texas, Accessed on 10th Oct 2016

Pecan Street Project Inc, 2008, Pecan Street Project Presentation,Available from: https://www.smartgrid.gov/files/OE0000219_PecanStreet_FactSheet.pdf, Accessed on 10th Oct 2016

Smart meters: who need to pay for them?

As I explained in the last blog, smart grid is important and useful. It sounds like every participator will benefit from smart grids, doesn’t it? It can transform the national hodge-podge electrical infrastructure into an advanced, new one with computerization, communications, and sensors to regulate and monitor the production, transmission, and consumption of electricity. That is to say, to the customer, smart grids can help monitor the bill and usage. To the energy company, they would prefer to see the costs shrink while efficiency and profits swell.

Thus, is Smart grid really good and easy to be applied? Taking Taipei as an example, in the following table, it shows the benefit that smart grids can bring in. By 2030, Taipei will become more efficiency, more renewable and more sustainable.

 

However, currently, most of the actions that have taken place in Taipei in order to make the energy smart are to use the smart meters. Is it really cheaper? If all the family needs to install the smart meters, it requires at least 800 billion Taiwan Dollar of budgets. Then next question is who will pay for this? The Government? Electric companies? Or individuals?

Some scholars, such as Professor Fazheng Lin believe, governments can make some allowance for the families and the individual family has the responsibilities to pay the charge through increasing electric fee per unit.

Then, question comes. If installing the smart meters requires the payment directly from the customers, the participation will be definitely influenced and most likely to decreased, because not all families believes the benefits of smart meters. Thus, one of the key barriers of the installation of Smart meters for Taipei is to answer who the payees of the installing fee are.

Thus, installing the smart meters by the producers, but paid by the customers is impractical. in my opinion, these fees should be shared by all the parties. All the players in the game participants in the game should be involved in the allocation of the fees.

Why Smart Grids are important to us?

From my last blog, we can find that there are some common points that all the smart grids projects obtain, integration, sustainable and this happened to answer the question why smart grids is important and how to achieve it? Thus, in this blog, I will explain why smart grids are important?

I believe that it is important to both individuals and nationals.

On one side, to the individuals, it can help customers minimise the energy bills. As IBM (2009) demonstrate that, “having a smart meter installed will enable customers to view consumption rates and costs of appliances” Beside of this, smart grids, “enabled by the take-up of smart meters and smart appliances combined with demand side response measures, enable consumers and communities to have greater control over their energy use and benefit from shifting demand to off-peak times of the day”

So far, according to research firm Berg Insight, there will be 602.7 million smart meters installed throughout the world by 2016. That represents a compound annual growth rate of 26.6 percent between 2010 and 2016(Katie, 2011).

We also can understand the question from the other aspect, the benefit for the customers reflect the fact that smart grids can help achieve the goal of saving energy and reducing energy penalty. According to NEMA (2016),  “The basic concept of Smart Grid is to add monitoring, analysis, control, and communication capabilities to the national electrical delivery system to maximize the throughput of the system while reducing the energy consumption”. That is to say, it combines different technologies together, such as the Information and Communication Technology, the Internet of Things in order to collect the usage data of energy by digital sensors. Thus, accompany with the data which were collected by sensors, it is valuable to adjust the energy producing and transport.

On the other side, the development of smart grids can reduce the energy independence on foreign energy, which can significantly improve own energy security. As International Energy Agency (2016) explains, the Smart Grids can play a significant role in enabling nearly all clean energy technologies, such as solar energy, the renewable energy. That is to say, due to the development of renewable energy, the dependency on the traditional energy as crude oil gets lower. In other words, this is a new style of integration of traditional resources, which can effectively allocate the energy in order to achieve the balance between energy supply and demand.

Beside of this, the establishment of Smart Grids can relieve the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by increasing the utilisation of renewable energy sources in the power chain, which is a global concern for environment protection (ABB, 2016).

Thus, we now can understand the importance of building smart grids. At the same time, We can imagine that in different regions, the use and development of smart grids may differ and thus, in my next blog, we’ll explore the specific development of smart grids in different smart cities.

If you have any question, please do leave it below and really look forward to discussing with you.

See you next time.

Reference

Department of Energy and Climate Change (2014), Smart Grid Vision and Routemap, Available from: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/285417/Smart_Grid_Vision_and_RoutemapFINAL.pdf, (Accessed on 29th Sep,2016).

Katie, Fehrenbacher ( 2011), There will be 600M smart meters by 2016, gigaom.com, Available from: https://gigaom.com/2011/10/20/there-will-be-600m-smart-meters-by-2016/, (Accessed on 29th Sep, 2016).

MENA (2016), What is Smart Grid and why is it important? Avaiable from: https://www.nema.org/Policy/Energy/Smartgrid/Pages/What-Is-Smart-Grid.aspx (Accessed on 24th Sep 2016).

International Energy Agency (2016), Energy Technology Perspectives 2016, OECD: Paris.

ABB (2016), Why Smart Grids, Available from: http://new.abb.com/smartgrids/why-smart-grids, (Accessed on 26^th Sep 2016).