Green Energy

The goal of having an intelligent building starts with early planning in the design stage. There are enormous benefits to be gained by creating intelligent buildings. The Pullman South Hotel in Beijing, China, is managed by the Accor Group in France and is seated in the central area of the new Economic & Technological Development Area. This is the only 5-star hotel in the new area, which makes its profile that much higher. With 19 floors, the hotel is equipped with guest rooms, dining, entertainment and recreation facilities.

Recently a university in Taiwan was experiencing dramatic power usage increases due to its growing number of campus buildings and students. Aiming to analyze their power consumption and increase their power efficiency across 52 buildings, the university wanted to build a power management system utilizing web-based hardware and software. With these goals in mind, they contacted Advantech to help them develop their system and provide them with the means to save energy in the years to come.

Intelligent residential quarters in China have been increasing in popularity since their introduction in the 1980’s, especially in the larger cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Intelligent residential quarters are equipped with elevators, water & sewage pumps, lighting, security and more. Automatic monitoring is necessary for ensuring safe operation at all times. An international intelligent residential quarter located in Shanghai city uses Advantech’s WebAccess as the kernel of its Building Automation system.

In modern society, water supply plants play an important role in providing daily and clean water to citizens. Essentially, a water-supply system can be divided into three sections: purification, transmission and consumption. The purification of untreated water ensures the water is safe for a variety of purposes. Distribution reservoirs, often built on top of mountains or in the woods, supplement the water transmission system during peak demands and last are the pipes which deliver the water.
 

The world’s electricity system is undergoing profound changes for a number of reasons: among them the sharp rise in electricity consumption in emerging markets, the increase in producers connected to the network due to the liberalization of the electricity market, and the integration of intermittent renewable energy sources due to new greenhouse gas emission goals. At the same time, the electrical system must continue to meet the stringent requirements of quality and service, keeping the balance between supply and demand, and maintaining both safety and security at all levels. To meet these requirements, the electrical system is evolving in several areas, in particular in transmission and distribution, data collection and communication, and in applications and services. Smart grid technology deployment is taking place on all these levels in an attempt to modernize the network and respond to ongoing changes, while meeting the requirements of safety, quality and stability.

To ensure that customers’ equipment isn’t damaged, electricity suppliers need to ensure that the voltages delivered to customers are at an even level. They achieve this by the continual monitoring of the supply equipment.

Swansea Metropolitan University (SMU) based in South Wales (UK), has been a major centre for the delivery of vocational higher education since 1853. The University employs more than 500 staff and teaches more than 6,000 students. The Welsh Assembly (Welsh government) sets energy targets for large organizations to achieve and by doing so they receive some form of rebates or benefits. So recently the university commissioned a new energy saving system which combined a Target and Monitoring (T&M) and a Building Management System (BMS) which needed to be custom built to specific requirements. This was implemented by Highland Services, as well as the University M&E maintenance company with SCADA software

As many energy companies seek to reduce their footprint on the environment, more efficient power and energy generation is becoming a critical issue. In the power generation and distribution market, maintenance-free power backup systems and IEC 61850-based power transmission & distribution systems improve energy generation and distribution efficiency. Power substations are subsidiaries of electricity generation systems where voltage is transformed from high to low or reversed using transformers. Nowadays, multiple protocols, including many proprietary protocols with custom communication links exist for substation automation and interoperation with devices from different vendors would be a huge advantage to users of substation automation devices.

Our customer is a local system integrator with extensive experience in the photovoltaic market. Their customers are mainly, but not exclusively, public utilities (not only Italian ones) who are involved in this market area and applications. One of their main focuses is solar inverter manufacturing, which brings them most of their business. Recently, their business has grown more and more in this area and thanks to strong demand for environmental applications that growth is expected to continue. For this specific application, the customer was looking for different PC controllers based on the specific requirements of the plants, as well as one single and trusted partnership with an experienced and consolidated brand that can provide added value.

As many energy companies seek to reduce their footprint on the environment, more efficient power and energy generation is becoming a critical issue. In the power generation and distribution market, maintenance-free power backup systems and IEC 61850-based power transmission & distribution systems improve energy generation and distribution efficiency. Power substations are subsidiaries of electricity generation systems where voltage is transformed from high to low or reversed using transformers. Nowadays, multiple protocols, including many proprietary protocols with custom communication links exist for substation automation and interoperation with devices from different vendors would be a huge advantage to users of substation automation devices.

China's national wind power capacity is expected to reach 30 million W by 2015. By conservative estimation, China's wind power capacity will be up to 80 million W by 2020. The dramatic increase in the number of wind power plants thereby requires a great number of wind farm information management systems and remote wind turbine monitoring systems. Since these systems are used in harsh environments, they need the support of managed industrial Ethernet switches with wide temperature ranges. Recently, a large manufacturer of wind power turbines purchased Advantech's EKI series as the main network switches for its management system.

The Sun is a huge source of abundant power, sending nearly 10,550 EJ of energy to the Earth every day. This is more energy in one hour than all the combined cities of the world use in one year. To try and harness this magnificent power, many countries have been investing in solar technologies for over 30 years. Today’s solar thermoelectric systems include reflectors, mirrors, heat insulating absorbers and advanced motion control technology. Advantech’s own Industrial Wireless Ethernet products are a perfect fit for many such applications due to their great performance, reliability and ruggedness.