source of image: https://www.thegpsc.org/knowledge-sector/integrated-urban-planning

I strongly relate to Smart Cities or Smart Infrastructure as the grouping area within businesses, focusing on the Edge, delivering energy transmission to the final delivery point for residential, mobility or commercial needs.

There is so much potential in technology currently being invested in our cities and their infrastructures. There are many estimates of this investment, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, they estimated that cities around the world would need to double current infrastructure investments from $10 to $20 trillion annually, to build the necessary physical infrastructure to support growing populations and needs[1].

So often, the focus tends to be on physical or urban infrastructure, but the importance of social support needs equal attention.

To deliver the promise of digitally “smart” infrastructure does need the combination of physical and social infrastructure combining, to leverage all that can be made possible in innovative urban development, as this achieves the outcome of building a city open, inclusive, and delivering solutions to realize societal benefits.

The critical issue is achieving community engagement.

If we do not recognize the equal importance of social infrastructure, then we can face a potentially divided and polarised environment in which no amount of technology on its own can resolve. To make it inclusive, we need awareness and understanding.

This engagement needs to embrace all those that live in our smart cities of the future; the old, disabled, disenfranchised, homeless, vulnerable, marginalized, those rich or poor, all need to be broken down of the many “enclaves” we see today.

For a city’s citizens to value technology, they must relate to it, to appreciate it is contributing to their lives. Often this is referred to as a “quality of life” need.

The solutions for any contemporary urban city need to be engaging for all.

They need to unite communities; they need to provide a sense of identity where “advantage and benefit” are widely shared and seen but still value diversities that often make cities vibrant and attractive places to be living in.

The end solutions in cities should not only be “smart” but be intelligently applied

Citizen engagement is not just an end solution; it is an inclusive one from the very first moment any planning for change takes place. Cities will not engage communities if citizens feel you are disrupting, even destroying, long-standing relationships, and community spaces. Citizens need to relate and will ask: “what are the cost and disruptions, and will these be outweighed by the (eventual) benefits?”

City planners cannot make the mistake of offering binary choices of “accept or refuse,” they need to continually engage and communicate the value to the city, the cost to the citizen in “concrete” ways.

It is the partnership from inception that can bring citizen engagement and growing recognition that the changes, disruptive as they are initially, will bring economic and social benefits to their lives. It is articulating the case and giving it meaning and value.

Today we are providing outcomes of smart city investment.

The emphasis may be on City Smart solutions for infrastructure and systems, but increasingly citizen-centric smart solutions are as important; these give a greater connection and engagement. The provision of apps covering civic-engagement, digitalization of citizen services, bike and car sharing, smart parking, digital payments on public transport, private e-hailing, the arrival time of public transportation, and many others show tangible outcomes.

These solutions outlined above directly benefit the citizen; they can begin to appreciate the value of the investments made as ‘it’ relates to them. The more a citizen ‘sees,’ they will relate.

Smart city solutions are delivering real-time public transit info, road navigations apps, food ordering options, volunteering opportunities. Then as technology takes hold, we have the potential for the exceptional ability to share understanding, in health applications, water consumption, and electricity usage can be real-time in personal monitoring and control.

We can have greater control over home energy as the solutions connect into the utility providers and e-payment options. The end-user becomes a more active participant and influencer, getting more actively engaged in their consumption management.

The more significant benefits of the smart city are economical and social

For example, as cities improve their transport infrastructure, the critical aims are lowering congestion and pollution through more optimal use of technology. It is the ability to co-ordinate faster actions at times of emergency or in public safety threats through real-time analysis of sensor and surveillance cameras, better diagnostics, using artificial intelligence, and databases have high societal value for feeling safe and secure.

The ability to embed sensors and devices into the very fabric of commercial buildings, transport, homes, and factories, allows for putting a “smartness” through the data collected, monitored, and then analyzed to optimize those assets in there efficiency and effectiveness to more significant benefit.

Another level of engagement for citizens comes from a smart connected environment where they can search and find more dynamic groups of likeminded citizens to work together on collective interests. Citizens that they can help shape and form through a growing co-creation of decision making, digital democracy, and increase exchanges in a more participatory form of city governance.

As knowledge understanding forms the backbone of these engagements, the real potential of relating to data and information comes from the focused interventions that allow citizens to be more participatory in measuring the evidence of effectiveness, that openness will give all a growing sense of shared identity.

To deliver on this transformation to a “Smart City,” the promises need to provide tangible benefits or differences. Technology alone can make things better, but it is the combination with people that delivers the Smart payback. It is the marrying of both physical and social infrastructure into Smart Infrastructure as the central key, to engage communities, and connect citizens into any disruptive urban change.

Citizen engagement is essential to realize in our Smart Cities. A citizen who feels empowered determines so much of where their Smart City is going and what it means to them.

[1] Dobbs, Richard, et al., Urban World: Cities and the Rise of the Consuming Class, Report, McKinsey Global Institute, June

2012, https://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/urbanization/urban-world-cities-and-the-rise-of-the-consuming-class

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Smart Grids are part of the Smart Infrastructure approach in our need for complete Urban Transitions currently being undertaken. Let me try to step back here and give some broader understanding of “smart grids”

Firstly there is a need and push to changing the Energy Systems we have installed to be more responsive, adaptable and flexible.

There is a considerable movement to a very different way of power consumption presently going on. A move that brings the end customer into the equation far more than in the past, through the development of Smart Energy Grids.

The electric power system is undergoing a radical transformation worldwide, firstly with the decarbonize electricity supply, in replacing aging assets and transforming control with new information and communication technologies (ICT).

A smart grid system is self-sufficient electricity network system based on digital automation technology for monitoring, control, and analysis within the supply chain, connected into the (national) grid. Being smart it is increasingly providing electrical power from multiple sources of energy, increasing renewable energy sources, including wind turbines, solar power systems, and biomass. Smart grid technology is to provide easy integration and reliable service to the consumers

The Smart Grid has opened Energy distribution up in radical ways.

The Smart Grid is presently being built, more from a bottom-up movement to handle today’s demands, driven by digitalization, where we are all becoming reliant on computerized equipment and technology, where energy is essential to be “on” at all times. Our world has become a connected one and energy keeps it “turned on.”

Transitioning from the past centralized energy grids into decentralized ones

The “grid” refers to the electric grid, a network of transmission lines, substations, transformers and more that deliver electricity from the power plant to your home or business. In the past, energy grids were all about utilities managing their infrastructure, protecting their assets and responding to any ‘outage’ as quickly as humanly possible.

The past way was to manage energy by a central generation source, that put in place the distributed system where consumers or customers were designated as ‘just’ a receiver of energy services, trapped often by one monopolistic provider.

Energy supply, through this non-participative dialogue, became a general expectancy that “you flip the switch” and supply would be instantly available. The problems with this one-way flow of energy management have been increasingly under pressure for some time.

Energy supply has been reliant on decade-old infrastructure approaches; it became over time a ‘patchwork’ network that always needed to keep being repaired, added to, or fixed, to keep it going. The concept of the energy grid needed modernizing as it was not keeping pace with the increased variance in demands.

Many energy grids today are becoming highly vulnerable, not just to manage increasingly sudden “peak demands” but was having to deal frequently with outages and emergencies from increasingly severe storms, earthquakes, and other natural disasters, as well as increased risk of terrorist or security attacks.

The shift  is towards “Smart Grids.”

To move towards a different energy grid, we needed a new kind of electric grid, known today as the “Smart Grid.”

What goes into a Smart Grid?

A smart grid works like the internet or your smartphone. It allows for two-way communication between the utility, through the energy ‘transmission structure’ to the customer. By having this grid digitally connected through the transmission structure, the technology and the equipment infrastructure works together to give a responsive environment to adapt changing electric demand, detect and minimize outage when equipment fails, or requirements alter.

Also, this is not a one-way “flow” as in the past from energy supply to customer. There is a whole new “distributed generation” where customer-owned or community-owned generators can produce their energy and contribute any excess generated back into the grid.

This dramatic change in the energy business model has opened the potential for “home-grown electricity” that complements and augments energy supplied through the primary grid. The ability to generate and sell back into the grid allows the customer to play an increasing part in optimizing the operating system and reducing their costs.

Exciting new solutions are emerging, three examples being:

Solutions are emerging to offer “zero-net-energy commercial buildings” that can balance energy generation and conservation through smart grid technology approaches.

We see the pioneering of energy storage through Smart Grid Technologies with thermal storage or hybrid air conditioning for influencing peak load demands, and we have the growing potential of lithium-ion batteries for PHEV applications.

The ability to improve on the sensors enables more power to flow over existing lines, and along with continued improvements in superconducting cables, there is potential to reduce losses and carry 3-5 times more power than traditional copper-based cable.

In summary, a smart grid can deliver a dramatically different energy environment

A smart grid employs innovative products and services together with intelligent monitoring, control, communication, and self-healing technologies to:

1. Better facilitate the connection and operation of generators of all sizes and technologies.
2. Allow consumers to play a part in optimizing the operation of the system.
3. Provide consumers with greater information and options for how they use their supply.
4. Significantly reduce the environmental impact of the whole electricity supply system.
5. Maintain or even improve the existing high levels of system reliability, quality, and security of supply.
6. Maintain and improve existing services efficiently.
7. Apply digital processing and communication across power grids
8. Allow data to flow and gives information management a more central role to make “energy smart.”

The Smart Grid comprises everything related to the electric system in between any point of generation and any point of consumption, so the grid becomes more flexible, responsive, and interactive and from this improves the system by providing real-time feedback that improves efficiencies and effectiveness.

Source of reference https://www.iec.ch/smartgrid/background/explained.htm>

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