Leaves of Yggdrasil

"Under the shady green,

Leaves of Yggdrasil,

Three Norns spin a thread so coarse,

Fate of man and Gods they weave."

A clip from the music video. I love how the song is fairytale-like but the video has electro vibes.

"And then daylight binds her heart..."

Today's blog post is named after a song I love from the wonderful and beautiful Danish singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and composer, Myrkur. She has a wonderful folk album called Folkesange and it has a beautiful fairytale vibe - but this song the most of all. In fact If somebody had to embody fairy and folk tales in a song this may well be it. It takes me back 2 years. 

My first Christmas alone. My first Christmas in the UK.Working as an "Energy Specialist", discovering these folk songs, exploring by the sea in Brighton and Portslade especially. 

My first year of my career and the challenges that come with that. The challenges that that brings. Going to Chichester for the first time and falling in love with a favourite tree their and being intrigued by the ancient-looking carpark (is it like Roman or something?).

On the nature of the blog

The blog was only ever meant for me. It was only ever meant for me to develop and explore and future my passions and explore stuff. I don't always have to share it on LinkedIn and I don't always really want to. 

Hopefully if anyone really wants to read my blog they will keep on coming back to it. I feel like the pressure to get a response on LinkedIn is taking away from the fun of this blog.

Revising DI (distributed intelligence)

Here are some notes from yesterday's blog post...

There is an increasing amount of grid-relevant data that is becoming available, not least because of smart meters and increased frequencies of reads. 

This is good because we want the grid to be able to respond to data that is real-time - and not just to complex engineering models which have been made on the basis of how things have been in the past. However the system today is still lacking in the ability to provide us with what we need especially in light of the growingly complex way in which users are consuming electricity. 

Moreover, there are increased challenges in the power grid - DERs are growingly rapidly, and they ae becoming increasingly more used, and then this is rendering power flows to be far more complex, thus increasing the complexity of the grid. Therefore, and as the above paragraph says, "There is a need for [greater] visibility and control at the grid edge." Visibility and control at the grid edge. Visibility and control at the grid edge. 

This also raises the question of how data are used - should they go through the "back office" i.e. and be read by people? A lot of my work has been around understanding that software which makes these data more accessible and understandable would work best. But Itron, who were the main interviewees of yesterday's article, seem to be suggesting that you can bypass the human who analyses the data (not all but in some cases) - and instead you can use smart technology that can act straight away on the data that it reads.

But that I would argue still takes a human who would analyse, read and process samples of said data before programming it into the machine. And what if said machines are unreliable? Do we program in alerts for if something goes wrong - I guess so? If a fleet of electric vehicles charging over night fails, then can the taxi company operate tomorrow? Can a software engineer be alerted if the tech fails in the night and even then will they be able to do anything? How will the AI distributed software even know to alert anybody - won't it think that it's already doing a great job? These are just some questions on my mind. These are just some things that bother me...

A little more revising here...

Software can open up doors to new opportunity - i.e. to the solving of new problems. The more DERs we have, the more "real-time monitoring is needed to maintain the reliability and quality" of the grid. Meters or meter groups are already "smart" and "intelligent" and can take action. As well as saving time, there can be unexpected benefits to intelligent hardware, such as the rapid detection of faults, and their correct diagnosis, saving both time and money and preventing the consequences of outages.

Oh yeah. And then there's the Schneider Electric bit - asset management software allows utilities to understand their asset health and to understand risks to their assets. This allows them to prioritise maintenance actions. 

This allows for more timely and informed decision making. And then this allows utilities to: maximise crew resources, avoid outages, and save costs.

(Asset management software also allows utilities to integrate workflows which have traditionally been siloed).

As for edge management... 

The two type of solutions, demand management and grid metering, can allow and help utilities to better: design and operate their low-voltage (LV) grids. It can allow them to enhance their mete operations and enhance the quality of the data that they collect, as well as how they even collect it in the first place! This will allow them to: gain system insights, maximise DER capacity hosting, and increase customer engagement. This in turn will support usage optimisation and support demand management. And thus, better grid edge management can get users better engaged in the grid. And more engaged users means more high-quality data that can help us to enhance, optimise and monitor the grid, and thus improve its resilience.