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Smart Cities and Energy Management

2014-4 (Vol.50, No.2)

Fujitsu is presently participating in the planning and building of Smart Cities in various regions of Japan. It is helping to create cities that can achieve a balance between environmental considerations and ease of living by building energy control centers and introducing energy management system (EMS) solutions to make local energy management a reality. In the field of energy, Fujitsu continues to develop and provide energy solutions in conjunction with institutional reforms in the areas of power generation and power distribution. This special issue introduces Fujitsu's approach to Smart Cities in Japan and the sustainable energy solutions offered by Fujitsu.

Feature Papers

1. Preface (565 KB): On a global level, humanity faces a variety of problems due to the increasing world population, including food, water, and energy shortages, crowded cities, environmental destruction, and global warming. Japan in particular faces the problem of providing a stable supply of energy due to the aftereffects of the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011. The efforts it has made in meeting these challenging problems has made Japan a "country at the frontier of emerging social problems." Indeed, Japan is becoming an "advanced problem-solving nation" that can lead the world in creating a new society. Fujitsu aims to achieve a Human-Centric Intelligent Society by contributing to the solution of social problems through the power of information and communications technology (ICT) and by promoting the creation of new values in local communities. ---[Kenichi Yamagishi, Head of Smart City Promotion Unit]

Overview

2. Fujitsu's Approach to Smart Cities (1.62 MB ): The problems now facing Japan, such as an energy shortage and a falling birthrate combined with an aging population, are problems that other countries around the world will eventually have to face. Japan is thus in a position to be a front runner in solving these problems and thereby become a leader in solving problems and creating a new society. To help Japan play this role, Fujitsu is promoting Smart Cities in which information and communications technology (ICT) is used to contribute to society and people's lives. Fujitsu's idea for creating a Smart City is to realize smarter energy usage and social infrastructures by using ICT, to have discussions with communities in order to resolve local issues, to find ways to revitalize communities, and to develop a means of sustainably circulating social values through ICT. This paper outlines Fujitsu's approach to Smart Cities and presents its approach to developing solutions to problems in different industrial fields. It also describes demonstration experiments in which Fujitsu is participating. Energy solutions that provide an infrastructure for Smart Cities are also described. ---[Hisatsugu Tamai]

Smart Cities

3. Promotion of Smart Community in Aizuwakamatsu City Area (1.77 MB ): Aizuwakamatsu City is a leading city in Japan for tourism, a city with abundant nature, a long history, and rich culture. By harnessing the benefits of its abundant nature, the city is promoting the implementation of renewable energy facilities and is supporting a program to encourage the usage of local products. Through these activities, Aizuwakamatsu City is working to create, invest in, and stimulate industries, build infrastructure for a good quality of life, and provide peace of mind and security to its residents. Fujitsu has partnered with the city for more than 40 years, working together to establish a production base for its semiconductor business. Through this relationship, Fujitsu, along with the Tohoku Electric Power Company, has been supporting the Aizuwakamatsu Area Smart Community Promotion Project since 2011. Here, we introduce this project and explain one of the activities in which we have been involved—creating an energy control center to visualize energy provision and usage. We also describe how regional vitalization is mandatory for smart community development. We use the term "smart community" rather than "Smart City," the term Fujitsu normally uses, to be consistent with the usage of the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. ---[Naoto Tada, Motohiro Marui, Akihiro Mizutani]

4. A Smart Community Reflecting Residents' Wishes: The Awaji Green Future Project (3.17 MB ): The many issues facing Japan, including energy generation, global warming, an increase in CO₂ emissions, an aging population, unemployment and underemployment, and regional depopulation, as well as the need for a stable and efficient energy infrastructure and the need to improve the quality of life in depopulated regions, have made it important to optimize the control of energy and to create opportunities for energizing depopulated regions. Such "smart" communities are based on a visualization of the issues affecting the region's administrators and residents and of their perceptions of those issues. Fujitsu has been using Field Innovation methods of interviewing people in an area and observing their activities to identify social values that are held by the regional administrative bodies and residents. From our analysis of the gap between them, we determine the optimal community for that area. This paper introduces the Awaji Green Future Project as an example of our Field Innovation activities. ---[Ayako Yajima, Toshiro Iwami, Akihiko Oka, Hajime Takahashi]

5. Manipulating Data to Maintain Transportation Infrastructure (1.80 MB ): It is becoming a major headache for the national government, prefectures and municipalities in Japan to properly and adequately maintain transportation infrastructure such as roads and bridges in order to improve people's quality of life and be prepared for natural disasters. While the budget for its maintenance has been falling in the past couple of decades, those authorities must efficiently and appropriately maintain such infrastructure. In view of statistics showing a huge increase in the number of transportation facilities that are over 50 years old, we have to establish a completely new maintenance scheme. Fujitsu is the leading information and communications technology (ICT) company delivering a wide range of services for transportation infrastructure management at the moment. It is now introducing a brand new system for monitoring roadways that makes it possible to collect road condition data automatically by using portable telecommunication devices. ---[Shigeyuki Murakami, Takashi Shimada, Hiroyuki Tani, Kazuyoshi Kuzunishi]

Energy Management Solutions

6. Approach to Smart House Services (1.16 MB ): Major house builders had been playing the central role in developing smart houses as residences that offer safe, secure and affluent lives. However, since the Great East Japan Earthquake, power shortages have become a serious problem and more and more entities have been introducing home energy management systems (HEMS) as a way to be self-sufficient in terms of energy and save energy in the event of a disaster. Also, consumer electronics makers and housing equipment makers have been proceeding with the development of new appliances in order to realize energy saving, energy creation and energy storage solutions for the home. One research company predicts that the market size of Japanese smart houses will reach 4000 billion yen by 2020. This paper describes the solutions that can realize Fujitsu's Smart House services which connect homes with society and communities via information and communications technology (ICT), and also create services that increase residents' QOL. ---[Hisatsugu Tamai, Akitsugu Yamada]

7. Approach to Energy Management for Companies (1.56 MB ): Most companies in Japan are taking energy-saving actions in an effort to cope with environmental problems such as global warming. In addition, the increase in power rates in recent years due to the shutdown of many nuclear power plants after the Great East Japan Earthquake, increasing price of fossil fuels, and depreciation of the yen has affected the business management in many companies. Therefore, many companies including small and medium-sized building owners need a further approach to reducing their energy demand and cutting their energy costs, and they should continue with such approach. In this situation, effective energy management with information and communications technology (ICT) is essential and Fujitsu Enetune-BEMS (building energy management system) provides companies with useful functions for effective energy management as a cloud service. The energy management functions of Enetune-BEMS include energy consumption visualization, energy data analyses, and equipment control, and these help companies to reduce their energy demand and cut costs. This paper describes topics related to Enetune-BEMS such as the adopted technologies, cost-reduction effects relating to energy management and future plans for functional enhancement. ---[Tomiyasu Ichimura, Masahiro Maeeda, Kunio Fukumoto, Ken Kuroda, Ryuzou Fukunaga]

8. Optimized Energy Management at Fujitsu Group Companies (1.65 MB ): Fujitsu has established environmental reference models by using information and communications technology (ICT) products and solutions with the purpose of reducing the environmental load on consumers and society and improving environmental efficiency. Under the banner "Green Reference for Tomorrow," Fujitsu has designated four types of facilities within the Fujitsu Group—R&D sites, plants, offices, and data centers—as the types of sites to be modeled. Various types of know-how are accumulated by putting the solutions into practice at these sites. "Energy management" is a core solution, and Fujitsu has striven to continuously improve it by optimally using the knowledge it has obtained through operations at these sites. This paper presents a new type of environmental management based on the Fujitsu Group environmental policy. It is implemented in an "Environment Management Dashboard" solution. The paper also discusses the expansion of this solution to all of the Fujitsu Group sites and introduces our research and development initiatives at representative R&D, factory, and office sites. ---[Tetsuzo Ozawa, Seiji Kawaguchi, Takuji Nishijima, Masayuki Hamakawa, Tetsuji Ishikawa, Hitoshi Okamura]

9. Solution to Utilization of Smart Meter Data (1.60 MB ): Since the Great East Japan Earthquake, when energy supply and balance issues began to attract public attention, various power saving approaches have taken root in our life. Besides human factor-related approaches such as turning off switches when electrical appliances are not in use and changing the temperature settings of air conditioners, solutions based on digital judgment are needed, such as a way to visualize the amount of power consumed by equipment and control such power consumption depending on demand. Power suppliers also now need to be able to make more sophisticated estimates of power demand so as to realize a more efficient and stable energy supply. The power suppliers can meet this requirement today through introducing smart meters. These devices can analyze power usage from diverse angles by collecting various pieces of data, including that on the power consumed, in small increments. Fujitsu will propose these kinds of solutions to support optimum data usage. We believe these solutions will be used by both the demand and supply sides of power and serve as a foundation for the Smart Grid to be introduced in future. In this paper, the structure and characteristics of the solution are described. ---[Koji Nomura, Tetsuya Kashiwagi, Taku Yamashita, Tadashi Kawade]

10. Fujitsu's Approach to Electricity Systems Reform through Electricity Retail Solutions (1.76 MB ): Major reforms in the Japanese electric power industry have been mapped out by the Expert Committee on Electricity Systems Reform of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). They include the adoption of smart meters, the full liberalization of the electricity retail business, and the unbundling of the power-generation and transmission-and-distribution departments in power companies. Fujitsu has leveraged its extensive know-how in electric-power sales and systems to develop electricity retail solutions that can respond promptly to changes in the business environment. Nevertheless, the coming reforms in electricity systems will create a variety of issues, and new mechanisms are needed to solve them. This paper looks at the changes that we forecast the reforms will make to the electricity market. Our forecast is based on overseas examples and the unique features of the Japanese market environment. It also clarifies the directions that solutions should take in the face of those changes and describes the ideas and mechanisms behind those solutions. ---[Katsuyuki Akahori, Jun Inutsuka, Shinichi Iwakiri, Michihiro Uchida]

11. Thermal Power Plant Asset Management with Asset-centric Data Model (2.10 MB ): Up until recently, electric power suppliers in Japan had been working on various strategies to provide an inexpensive and stable supply of electric power, and they had largely succeeded. However, the tight energy supply brought on by the Great East Japan Earthquake has created an opportunity for Japan to review the risks of depending on large-scale power plants for its power supply and has accelerated discussion on reforming its electric-power supply system. The trend is now toward greater dependency on thermal power generation and liberalization of the industry by legally separating the power-generation component from the transmission-and-distribution component. As a result, electric power suppliers find themselves in a difficult situation because they must now make management more efficient and reduce costs while still providing a stable power supply. Fujitsu has developed an asset management solution for thermal power plants to help suppliers reduce their equipment maintenance cost. This paper describes the asset-centric data model of this solution, the organization of asset-management work based on that model, and the usefulness and importance of an asset-centric data model. ---[Naoyuki Fujisawa, Shuichi Matsuo, Yukio Yamamoto, Kazuki Nonaka]

Research and Development

12. Trend and Technology Development of Demand Response (1.38 MB ): A Smart City is showing promise as the desired form of a city which can efficiently work with society's infrastructure like energy and transportation ones. In the domain of Japanese energy, an energy management system will change to a distributed system as a liberalized market of power is realized, and it will need a new mechanism where each distributed energy management system can work together with others to keep a good balance between power supply and demand. An ability to meet demand for energy is said to be necessary for the next-generation energy management system. Here we describe the demand response and demand response aggregator that is the key player in the demand response business. And, we explain automated demand response and standardization, the baseline estimate of power demand and the portfolio selection that are needed as functions of a demand response aggregator. ---[Toshihiro Sonoda, Hironobu Kitajima, Satoru Takahashi]

13. Development of Technologies to Simulate Power Flow for Power Grid (1.63 MB ): Energy problems are important social ones, and they cause many issues like electricity shortages and environmental impacts. Fujitsu Laboratories has researched and developed technologies to provide "social solutions" to such problems by using information and communications technology (ICT). Our group has been researching some energy management technologies, for example optimization technologies and prediction technologies for energy consumption and generation. In this paper, we introduce our development of a technology to simulate the power flow in a power grid. This simulation requires some special features compared with conventional power flow simulators, because the purpose of the simulation is mainly to carry out real-time monitoring of electricity in a grid. Therefore, we applied an algorithm called the backward-forward sweep method for high-speed processing, which is suitable for the typical Japanese grid model and has good scalability. And we also developed new equipment models (e.g., a distribution model, some transformer models, and a connection model) for this simulator. ---[Hideyuki Kikuchi, Yuichi Matsufuji, Tetsuya Kashiwagi, Tomoyoshi Takebayashi]

Environment

14. New Approach for Environmental Future City Created by ICT: Sustainable City Network (2.94 MB ): Various projects for the achievement of a Smart City or an environmental futuristic city are being advanced in Japan and all parts of the world. Recently, organizations have been required to cross-functionally solve different problems in different fields like energy, buildings, traffic, the environment, medical treatment and the industries of agriculture, forestry and fishery. Information and communications technology (ICT) is expected to be an effective tool for monitoring, visualizing, analyzing and optimizing flows of resources, energy, information, persons and goods. Here, we introduce Sustainable City Network as a new approach to solving various problems with ICT and achieve optimization by having cooperation in large areas in and between cities, towns, and villages. In this paper, we describe the results of a study and case studies on environmental fields. In addition, we introduce results of efforts to expand this new approach from environment problems to areas such as traffic/transportation, medical treatment, and agriculture. ---[Michinori Kutami, Minoru Takeno, Hiroko Ioka]

15. Development of Quantitative Evaluation Method regarding Value and Environmental Impact of Cities (1.25 MB ): Recently, more and more organizations have been proposing and introducing infrastructure to realize a Smart City because there has been an increase in environmental impact associated with urbanization. On the other hand, it is becoming more important to introduce information and communications technology (ICT) to create new services by connecting infrastructure organically. At the same time, an index is needed for making city government officials understand the problems and solutions regarding infrastructure. In Fujitsu, we are focusing on both the value and environmental impact of cities as a whole, and enhancing a quantitative evaluation method for introducing ICT solutions to cities. We have developed a quantitative evaluation method focusing on the efficiency of a city (degree of smartness) and effect that ICT has on a city. This paper describes the evaluation method focusing on the new evaluation concept, framework, and items for integration. In addition, it explains the impact evaluation method and shows a case study of introducing ICT solutions. ---[Takahiro Yamauchi, Michinori Kutami, Tomoko Konishi-Nagano]

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