25 US states have considered policies related to smart grids to date.

Nowadays our society is inextricably bound to technologies. One of extreme importance among these is electrification which relies on the power system. Not only ensures it secure and reliable electricity supply for our homes and offices but for our industry as well. Today’s technology has been born from the rivalry between great minds like Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla. 

In Australia the Smart Grid/Smart City project gained $100 million in 2009. Its objective is to link 9 500 households to a smart grid by 2013.

The electricity power grids could be ranked among the ultimate engineering achievements of the XX century. They have excellently executed their purpose in the age of the big coal, hydro and nuclear power plants. 

The annual growth of private investment in smart grid in the USA is 27% for the 2000 – 2008 timeframe.

But the reality of the XXI century confronts us against new challenges – climate change, electric vehicles, renewable energy sources, need to increasе the energy security, emissions reduction, accurate consumption measuring and many others. To face them the power grid must go further in its development and become “smart”. 

Some forecasts expect the US smart grid technology market to reach $171 billion by 2014.

We believe that the “smart grid” will strengthen our energy sector and will make it more flexible and competitive. Since strong energy sector means strong economy, our team from “Uconomics” organizes the third consecutive conference “Smart T&D grid” hoping that we’ll support the sharing of knowledge and ideas in this field.

Programme

Managers talk

Regarding energy efficiency, my opinion is that there is some progress on the pointed at Directive 2020 intermediate and final goals, although moving slower than needed.

Ivan Velikov
Deputy Chairman, National Real Estate Association

One should not save from investing in more expensive materials and technologies, because if you look in long term, these higher expenses return many times.

eng. Sergey Stoyanov
Chairman of the National Installation Union

The challenges are yet to come, after the European Parliament voted the change in the Directive for energy characteristics of the buildings. In accordance with the new texts, the energy consumption of the new buildings after 2020 should be close to zero.

Nickolay Galabov
Chairman of International Activities and Eurointegration Comission of the Chamber of Architects in Bulgaria

ENERGUY is a game developed by the “Agence de l’efficacité énergétique Québec” where you have to drag a guy called “ENERGUY” by the hand to help him save energy at home.

IUSES aims to promote an efficient way of using energy in every day life among secondary schools students and teachers. It showed the basic principles of energy efficiency and give a comprehensive guide to saving energy in their everyday lives. IUSES project developped a behaviour- oriented educational kit including: handbooks, multimedia animations and experiment tool-kit.

Degree Days.Net is a website that generates heating and cooling degree days for locations worldwide. Degree days are commonly used in calculations relating to building energy consumption. It is targeted to energy professionals that use degree days for calculations relating to the heating and cooling energy consumption of buildings.

The beginning of this year’s EU Sustainable Energy Week (EUSEW) was marked by the launch conference of the multilingual version of the Common Language ‘sustainable construction glossary’. The multilingual version of this project was formally introduced on 11 April, at the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), in partnership with the Architects Council of Europe (ACE) and the European Concrete Platform (ECP).

Since buildings use 40% of the total energy in the US and European Union, energy efficient houses are becoming more and more interesting. In Germany a „Low Energy House“ has an energy consumption limit of 50 kWh/m2 per year for space heating. In Switzerland the term is used in connection with the MINERGIE standard – no more than 42 kWh/m2 per year should be used for space heating.

In the United States, a house built to the Passive House standard uses between 75 and 95% less energy for space heating and cooling than current new buildings that meet today’s US energy efficiency codes. The Passivhaus in the German- language camp of Waldsee, Minnesota uses 85% less energy than a house built to Minnesota building codes. The Passivhaus standard for central Europe requires that the building must use less than 15 kWh/m2 per year in heating and cooling energy.

The United States and Germany are countries with almost the same standards of living, but average US citizen uses twice as much energy than average German. Reasons for that difference are quite complex, but we will mention two main reasons. First reason is cheap energy in US that does not motivate people to invest in energy efficiency. Second big reason is inferior spread of high-tech and energy efficient technology in US comparing to Germany.

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