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Degrees of Freedom in Information Sharing on a Greener and Smarter Grid

Authors:
Kristian Helmholt
Gerben Broenink

Keywords: Smart grid; information sharing; privacy

Abstract:
Providing warmth, food, housing, and other necessities of life require the use of energy, which causes it to play a pivotal role in society. Changes in the production, distribution and consumption of energy (carriers) impact everyone. Next to well known (expected) changes in the area of renewable energy sources, we foresee the possibility of major changes in the way society shares information about production, distribution and consumption of energy (carriers). This is caused by the expected societal benefits of exchanging more information between parties connected on the energy grid: more efficiency though balancing of supply and demand, which in turn makes energy less scarce and avoids unnecessary ‘heat pollution’. However, the sharing of information could introduce imbalances in ‘societal’ power between governments, companies and consumers. We argue that all parties involved should consciously decide – on a well informed basis - on what information they want to share. In this paper, we provide an overview of the degrees of freedom in information sharing on the green & smart energy grid of tomorrow.

Pages: 141 to 147

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2011

Publication date: May 22, 2011

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-412X

ISBN: 978-1-61208-136-6

Location: Venice/Mestre, Italy

Dates: from May 22, 2011 to May 27, 2011