INTELEC®, The International Communications Energy Conference, is an international annual technical conference for the science and engineering of energy systems for ICT. Research and technical papers explore the needs and trends in the subject areas of power conversion, energy storage, and high-reliability and mission-critical powering infrastructure. Topics include DC power plants, powering architectures, converters, inverters, batteries, fuel cells, grounding, physical and thermal designs, building and equipment cooling systems.
Energy@home is a sponsor of the 2018 Conference that will be held in Torino, Italy at the Lingotto Conference Centre, 7 Oct – 11 Oct 2018, (link). At the Conference, Energy@home will organize a workshop on “ICT plants’ energy systems for Smart Grids - new business opportunities through demand side participation in balancing service markets” based upon an extension of its recent research published last February (link).
ICT Operators can be on the forefront of this new type of services thanks to their inherent very high degree of flexibility through their energy systems, leveraging on the multiplicity of assets, such as batteries, rectifiers, gen-sets, transformers, HVAC. The strong connection to the electric grid (often in MV or even in HV), together with the increasing availability of spare room in the ICT plants, can enable easier and lower cost installation of extra equipment so to directly deliver services to the electric grid or to host third party energy systems (e.g. of the DSO). Although being an essential element to the ICT services, energy systems are perceived as a “cost element” and funding their development is a difficult task. In essence, participation to the flexibility services can be the key to transform energy systems from OPEX elements to revenue generators enabling investments and development in their area.
This workshop of Energy@home aims to be an opportunity to inform on the present and future needs of the electrical networks, share knowledge and best practice on the usage of ICT plants for Demand-Response projects, with specific focus on business opportunities, cost-benefit analyses, tools and methodologies to value flexibility of ICT plants through the participation in the electricity reserve markets.
The list of speakers includes so far TIM, Orange, RSE and Polytechnic of Milano.
Registration is open on the Conference web site (link)