Distribution automation: Applications to move from today's distribution system to tomorrow's smartgrid
In 2008 the Hydro-Québec Distribution roadmap was completed. The resulting roadmap is based on customers' expectations, Hydro-Québec's business drivers, available technologies, Hydro-Québec's context and electrical distribution industry trends. This paper will present the distribution roadmap and then will focus on application and technology strategy to move from today's distribution network to tomorrow's Smartgrid.
Voltage Control in Active-Adaptive Electric Networks
The process of creating smart energy system in a normative regulation form is fixed in the Energy strategy of Russia for the period up to 2030. Innovative development of energy leads to its intellectualization, the main element of which is an active-adaptive network. Creation of an active-adaptive network is one of the main elements of building an intellectual power system in Russia. New materials, equipment, digital technologies and electronic equipment are being introduced. As a result, the structure of electrical networks is changed, their new properties appear. They include distributed generation, an active consumer, an abundance of the network with active elements, electrical networks monitoring and management in real time, self-test and self-recovery. These properties lead to the aggravation of the power quality problem not only as a result of the emergence of new sources of quality distortion, but also to a change in approaches to voltage regulation. The paper proposes a new approach to voltage regulation in active-adaptive electric networks, taking into account both traditional hierarchical voltage control and distributed control. The technique of optimum means choice and methods of voltage regulation in active-adaptive electric networks is offered.
Image Projection in Immersive 3D Visualization Laboratory
In recent years, many centers in the world attempted to build a virtual reality laboratory. The main idea of such laboratory is to allow the user to “immerse” into and move in a computer-generated virtual world. In the paper, the underlying principles of the system of virtual reality (VR) are described. The selected implementations constructed by the research centers of the world are also presented. The cave automatic virtual environment (CAVE) installation is planned to be implemented at the Gdansk University of Technology. In this solution, the images will be projected on flat screens arranged in the form of a cube. The user will be located inside a transparent sphere freely rotating inside a cube, which allows simulation of free movement without changing the position of the screens. A walking motion of the user will trigger changes in the computer-generated images on screens surrounding the sphere thus creating an illusion of motion. The problems of visualization in the planned installation are outlined and discussed.