Scottish Sensor Systems Centre

This seminar , hosted with the Power Networks Demonstration Centre , was aimed at public and private sector organisations interested in the efficiency, reliability, economics, and sustainability of the production, transmission and distribution of electricity, and businesses interested in developing products and services for the smart grid sector. The event captured industry challenges in the development of smart grid, and discuss technology solutions to meet these needs using – as a foundation – next generation intelligent sensors and sensor systems.

The Smart Grid

The current power grid is reaching its limitations; smart-grid technology will be needed to increase efficiency, reliability, and security of the electricity supply. The development of such a smart grid presents many new opportunities for the sensors and systems market.

The current grid is dominated by a system that is mostly electromechanical in nature, radial in its layout with centralised generating capacity and one way in its communication with little or no sensor feedback to centralised decision makers.

The idea behind the ‘smart’ grid is that the grid will respond to real-time demand. In order to do this, it will require sensors to provide this ‘real-time’ information. The key focus is to introduce a parallel digital network with two-way communication and develop the network topology to include distributed generation, grid storage and pervasive control systems as well as self monitoring and decentralised autonomous decision making.

All these changes present extremely attractive opportunities for sensor companies in a market expected to grow for a protracted period in a market which by 2017 is expected to generate revenues of more than $1Bn.

Post Event Downloads

Almost 70 delegates attended this event, and with thought-provoking speakers to encourage discussion and questions, there was a lot of lively debate. Presentations from the day are linked below:

• Agenda
• Biographies of Speakers
• Tim Summers, S3C Chairman
• Duncan Bremner, S3C Programme Manager
• Dr Iliana Portugues, Director, PNDC [to follow]
• Martin Hill, Future Networks Manager, SP Energy Networks [to follow]
• Bob Hopkins, Scottish and Southern Energy
• Mark Thompson, Energy Innovation  Centre (EIC) [to follow]
• EIC – Technical challenges from the UK Electricity industry
• EIC – Sample projects
• Dr Richard Bellingham, Sustainable Glasgow [to follow]
• Ronnie Melrose, IBM (Smarter Grid Ecoisland)
• Ronnie Melrose, IBM (Intelligent Operations Centre)
• Paul Beck, SELEX Galileo
• Dr Des Gibson, Gas Sensing Solutions
• Paul Egan, Neul
• Ross Mitchell, Freescale