KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Professor Salil Kanhere

School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW Sydney,
Australia

Title: Blockchain in Future Energy Systems: Applications, Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract:

The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) has driven the uptake of variable energy from renewable energy sources at both utility and distributed scale. This is driving the development of new market models from the traditional centralised energy trading models to Distributed Energy Trading (DET) models. Peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading is an example of DET model which allows consumers and prosumers in the distribution network to trade energy between themselves, lowering cost while providing balancing and other ancillary services to the network. However, DET requires trust in both DER sharing and P2P energy trading trans-action. Therefore, enabling technologies such as blockchains can help build trust and track DET transactions efficiently, securely and at low cost. Nevertheless, there are significant barriers associated with the integration of blockchain in energy systems including scalability, privacy and interoperability. The talk will discuss latest advances in adopting blockchain for distributed energy trading, including mechanisms to enable anonymous peer-to-peer negotiations and contracts, address privacy concerns and support seamless interoperability.

Biography:

Salil Kanhere received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA. He is a Professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW Sydney, Australia. His research interests include the Internet of Things, cyber physical systems, blockchain, pervasive computing, cybersecurity, and applied machine learning. Salil is also affiliated with CISRO’s Data61 and the Cybersecurity Cooperative Research Centre. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and ACM, an ACM Distinguished Speaker and an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor. He has received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award (2020) and the Humboldt Research Fellowship (2014), both from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany. He has held visiting positions at I2R Singapore, Technical University Darmstadt, University of Zurich and Graz University of Technology. He serves as the Editor in Chief of the Ad Hoc Networks journal and as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions On Network and Service Management, Computer Communications, and Pervasive and Mobile Computing. He has been involved in the organisation of many IEEE/ACM international conferences. He co-authored a book titled Blockchain for Cyberphysical Systems which was published by Artech House in 2020.

 

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Professor Álvaro Gomes

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computers, University of Coimbra,
Portugal

Title: Decarbonization, decentralization and digitalization of (future) power systems and the role of demand-side resources

Abstract:

The pervasive dissemination of renewable generation, especially dispersed small size units often located in the distribution grids or behind the meters, while highly contributing to reducing environmental impacts imposes changes in the dynamics operations and control of power systems. Also, the shift in the generation fleet from synchronous machines to power electronics-based generating units, is changing the response capability of the system to events. Existing communication between consumers and utilites allow to deploy demand responssiveness giving the end-user the ability to monitor and adequately manage his/her resources (production, controllable demand, storage) taking advantage of dynamic pricing programs or to incentive payments when responding to grid requests or due to participation in ancillary services markets. The power sytems are, thus, evolving making the real-time management and control of generating units, transmission and distribution systems, and demand-side resources more and more challenging. It is widely accepted that decentralized management is a request of future power systems in order to accomodate and manage all the available resources. However, the huge and complex computational resources needed to actively deploy demand response, the associated costs with the installation of smart home management systems, scalability issues, privacy concerns, and inadequate automation in decision-making processes, are hindering the adoption of such practices, and innovative solutions to manage complexities and difficulties posed by such dissemination are required. Blockchain-like technologies are seen as alternatives to traditional approaches. The talk will discuss the role of decentralized energy resources in the operation of future power systems, including the challenges and paradigms.

Biography:

Álvaro Gomes received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Coimbra in 2004. He is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computers, University of Coimbra and a researcher at INESC Coimbra. He has been responsible in several academic courses on Electrical Energy Systems, Electrical Energy Management, Energy Management in Buildings / Industry and Policies for Energy Market Transformation. His research interests include efficient use of energy resources, demand-side management, load modeling, public policies for promoting energy efficiency, smart power systems, deployment of generation based on renewable sources, demand-side flexibility, multiobjective optimization and evolutionary algorithms. He has participated / participates in several R&D projects. He is member of the Portuguese Engineers Association and member of IEEE. He often participates as reviewer for some international conferences and journals. He is co-author of more than one hundred papers in journals, book chapters and conference proceedings. He co-supervised 3 PhD thesis and is currently co-supervising six more PhD works. He has (co) supervised more than 50 Msc dissertations.

 

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