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With demand for electricity expected to double by 2050, Canada’s electric infrastructure needs substantial upgrades. Technological advancements that use information technology for greater sensing, communications, and control throughout the power system promise to make the current power infrastructure more effective and offer opportunities to improve overall performance and sustainability through new, smart transmission, distribution, and renewable generation assets.

UBC is delivering the science, technology, insight and leadership to transform Canada’s aging and increasingly constrained power grid into one that is clean, efficient, reliable, resilient and fundamentally improves our quality of living. Focused on the vital needs of the energy infrastructure, we are taking a system-wide, community-integrated approach to grid modernization to help realize the "grid of tomorrow”—where energy technology meets information technology through a network architecture as big as the Internet but faster, with unprecedented innovations at all levels: generation, storage, transmission, distribution, and end use. We are working in the following areas:

System monitoring and analytic innovations 

Bigger picture, better data: Today's grid operators view system status that is updated every 4 to 6 seconds and rely on simulations of system stability that require 2 to 4 minutes to run. Distribution utilities often rely on customer phone calls to alert them to local outages. UBC is working on a better way. Through our efforts in the areas of high speed sensors, real-time system monitoring and analytic innovations, we are developing the tools that will revolutionize operating equipment and help the utility industry acquire greater control—where operators can drill down into the grid, in real time, and where high performance computing and new algorithms enable operators to detect signs of grid failure or compromise before they happen.

The internet of things

Leveraging control with communications: More consumer objects are becoming embedded with sensors and controls, gaining the ability to communicate and change their behavior. The resulting information networks promise to create new business models, improve business processes and sustainability, and reduce costs and risks. In what’s called the Internet of Things, sensors and actuators embedded in physical objects—from phones to fridges—are linked through wired and wireless networks, often using the same Internet Protocol (IP) that connects the Internet. When objects can sense the environment, communicate and change their behaviour, they become tools for understanding complexity and responding to it swiftly. What’s revolutionary in all this is that these physical information systems are now beginning to be deployed at UBC, and some of them even work largely without human intervention.

End-use efficiency and demand response

Smart moves on the demand side: Today's electricity suppliers have little ability to manage demand in ways that are more efficient, reliable, or clean. UBC is making demand an active tool in grid management through our research and development in end-use efficiency and demand response. Advances in sensors, networks, and communications are helping us realize the full potential of a "smart grid" network—a network that enables two-way communication between the supply and demand sides using devices like smart meters and grid-friendly appliances. This will reduce pressure on the supply side and enable reliable grid management, improved demand efficiency, and reduced emissions.

Community integration and energy storage

Solving the renewable equation: Bioenergy, solar, wind and other renewable energy sources hold great promise for reducing our dependence on non-renewable fossil fuels while meeting increasing energy demands. But first we must find ways to reliably, efficiently, and cost-effectively capture, store, and distribute energy from sources that are, by nature, variable and intermittent. Focusing on renewable integration and energy storage, UBC is finding ways to integrate innovative renewable energy sources onto the power grid with innovative energy storage systems--solving challenges related to materials for large-scale storage batteries and analyzing technological and economic issues to assess the electric grid's ability to store renewable energy.

Cyber security and interoperability 

Protecting our national security: The cyber security of the grid is and will continue to be a critical national security objective as power systems around the globe make increased use of digital sensors and controls. UBC is protecting the grid through our research in cyber security and interoperability—defining the standards for secure, two-way communication and data exchange that will be critical to protecting the next generation of control systems.