So, let's kick off this smart. City course with
super important, topic called Smart Energy.
And in this section, I will be introducing you
to the context history Concepts in the
security risks facing the Smart Energy sector, and
what it means for your city and
more specifically, what it means for
you to help secure it.
So cities are demanding a lot of energy and over the years.
The energy consumption from cities has skyrocketed and
the lied up until now mostly in
fossil fuels that are obviously polluting
our environments in our cities and obviously
changes needed from
our city leaders, energy industry and producers Distributors
and even designers and energy entrepreneurs. So
in this section, I'm going to be talking about a lot of these Concepts and
What these kinds of things mean for keeping
our cities more secure
and energy independent?
So let's start right out of the gate and just
understand that seas are demanding a lot of
energy.
And to illustrate that fact, there's some importance
kinds of fun facts that
you need to know that. Obviously as I
talked about in the last section that the global population, as
of today is all you
know, somewhere between 50 to 60 percent
urbanized. And
so that's creating a lot of stress to supply the energy
demands for the citizens and the businesses in the
industries. And then what's
Both supporters at 75% of the energy consumption.
Today is also coming from
cities. So that's a huge proportion of
consume, energy consumption is
taking place within our cities loan and
last section. I talked about who those cities are and
it's becoming more epidemic takes
exponential and that in that sense. And
what's also important to know. Is that the CO2 emissions,
the air that makes our city
He's kind of stinky and smelly and
unhealthy that
they come from cities and they attribute
to the seventy-five percent of the CO2 emissions alone
on the global energy use. And that's a really important
discussion to have about how
we can transition from
the fossil fuels to the more renewable
and the green kinds of sources.
So let's put some things
into context. Let's look at the energy past present and
future. So dialing, back to 1850,
the cities became, especially
in the western kinds of economies relied
heavily on the biomass has, right? So
the coals and the woods and things to fuel the factories and
feel the homes and things like that. And
then Eureka there was a oil,
was the new gold.
And there was this kind of global expansion to
transform that type of liquid into
energy sources for
transportation and any
Home Heating and so forth and
fast-forward to 1950. And all
of a sudden, there's this kind of huge spike
in the way that we live and the
energy demands that are
increasing.
In terms of the the heating or the, the power, or
the lighting in our homes, in our cities as
we fast forward to today. We
see huge uptake in the Renewables in the Energy Mix. So
even though we're not some countries of course
are much closer, but most countries are really far
away from becoming energy, completely
energy, independent, and energy positive.
And so we have to kind of think about what
are those Technologies Solutions?
S that are working today to solve
a lot of these feature problems tomorrow?
So, for example, I'm
going to introduce you now to a whole Gambit
of different combinations of
energy for good and bad but it's important for
you. I know you don't all come from energy
sector, Smart City sector or design
sectors, but it's important for everybody to understand it
very the diversity of different energy
sources that are powering our
cities today.
So, the most obvious
one, the most popular one is the fossil fuels. So
the the energy that we're
extracting from Earth, that is millions of years old,
can be manifested
in burning, coal or natural gas
and oils. Nuclear is
a obviously a good one
because it doesn't pollute the air or the crate
climate change per se.
But a lot of these nuclear reactors are, of
course, producing lots of toxic waste. So we
have to ask ourselves. Okay, how how safe
is that. Solar is obviously the most popular kind
of example of how we can use solar
voltaic cells to
generate energy from
our friend Sun wind, especially
here in the Netherlands. Very famous for windmills. We
can use wind.
Tends to generate lots and lots of local energy
biomass is as
a theme that is picking up across
the world different locations. But again,
it's about using the kind of recycled parts
of organic wastes to burn
and keep slow, Heat, lots of things hydroelectricity.
Again, flows of water is
a wonderful energy source
that you can.
Harness the energy through turbines and so forth. Waves
again is another kind of cutting-edge Technology where these
kinds of buoys are in deployed
into the ocean and can move with
the ways of the tides and generate
lots of electricity hydrogen. Yeah.
It's another very, very super clean energy source
takes a lot of energy to produce it, but
it's non-toxic and super
Boom. Then geothermal. Is this kind
of wonderful concept about just kind of
Drilling down into the Earth and regulating
the kind of heat temperatures so
we can have new sources to not just cool but
also heat as a regular type of
thermostat for our cities.
So as I've just discussed,
there is a lot of energy
sources today, and I kind of portfolio, or
if you look at it as an inventory, there's
thermal energy because it just mentioned solar
wave and title nuclear, geothermal
Hydro biomass. And
these all start kind of contributing to the other kinds
of things, which start making about control.
Adams heat pumps the distributions and
it's important to kind of look at this diagram, a
little carefully, take your time on this one because what
you're seeing here is the interconnections of
energy, not just as lighting, but
heat electrical and
and gas grids as our kind of Legacy infrastructures.
So what you're seeing in this diagram is
that they're becoming more integrated in the future Smart
City.
So we've discovered a lot of definitions of energy sources
and what role they play in this
kind of ecosystem to power our
cities and lives, but let's dive a little bit
deeper and ask the question. What is Smart Energy?
First example is smart grids, which is
a much more Dynamic and decentralized network
that can more effectively manage the market production
transmission and distribution of electricity. I'll
get into some more practical examples of what these look like,
but when you start
decentralizing your energy production
and consumption from the from the National Grid
or from Regional grids, you
have much more
Or Independence, and I'll get into a
little bit more detail about how this can, how
this works. And of course, at
least you'll be creating new security challenges
for the Smart City. Smart meters is
the second one. The second example and
the simply a meter that records much more information about your are energy
consumption. So for example, it can really measure your
real-time energy consumption. You
can visualize those energy needs that,
you
Or your neighbors or your District are consuming. You
can share those and create whole new insights about
how how you, and how your neighborhood are performing in
terms of energy consumption. That's a really wonderful new
transition that it's not just the old thermostats. That
have been in the year. We get to share that information. We
can share that information. Now by the minute.
So in the third example, we're going to be talking about
energy storage as I've discussed. There's lots of
examples of businesses
and homes producing solar energy,
and it's kind of nice to kind of store
that energy locally. But if you can scale that on an urban level and
we're really talking about smart energy storage and
that's super, super important because that
reduces the risks in the demands. And
the dependencies on the
Cool, or the the older kind of
energy production systems. The
fourth example is the monitoring and management and
this definitely connects to all the previous three examples, whether
it's the smart grid, whether it's the smart meter
or the energy storage that when we start visualizing,
these things we can start explaining
to the consumers and the business owners, how
everything is working.
And in monitoring is also super important as
well, because it's, it's about the energy consumption at
Mass. So it's about the heating control lighting,
and we can start programming our our
homes and businesses to meet those demands.
So simple question, why do we need Smart Energy?
As I've just discussed, previously. There's a
bunch of reasons. So let's just go over them. Before
we move on to the next section, Smart Energy
can help deal with the revenue and cost savings.
And with new technologies. We can produce new assets that
are treatable and convertible new income streams or
cities and operators commuters and consumers, the
battery examples of Corsa illustration of
the extra capacity so we can
store the energy soup more locally.
And we can use that energy to curve
the costs and the dependencies that
keep the stress levels down on the infrastructure. Decarbonization.
Of course, is the kind
of depending on who you're talking to. But Smart Energy is
about a decarbonization reducing,
our Reliance on fossil fuels. And
this is this is such
an important kind of transition that
we need to be making so that we can achieve it.
And of Net Zero and a carbon neutral or
positive, or those neutral city, of
course, but a positive energy
situation where we're not consuming energy,
but we're all producing energy and
this is also important in
terms of security to because when we can demonstrate that,
we have enough energy Supply locally, as
I said, whether it's Hydro whether it's solar weather,
its title geothermal.
That we have much more Independence on how we use
energy to fuel our lives
and fuel our cities.
So let's move on to the next example,
which is seeing
is believing and these are real-world examples at
least from my window.