Abstracts of Magazine FUJITSU 2013-11 (Vol. 64, No. 6)

Special Issue: Smart City & Energy

• Fujitsu's Approach to Smart City

The problems that Japan is now facing, such as an energy shortage and falling birthrate combined with an aging population, are problems that other countries around the world will eventually have to face. Japan is in a position to be a front runner that solves these problems and becomes an advanced nation in the area of problem-solving to create a new society. To help Japan play this role, Fujitsu is promoting smart cities where information and communications technology (ICT) is used to contribute to society and people's lives. Fujitsu's idea of a smart city is to realize smarter energy usage and social infrastructures by ICT, to have discussions with communities and resolve local issues, find a way to achieve the ideal of community revitalization, and sustainably develop a circulation of social values with ICT. This paper outlines the smart city that Fujitsu is aiming for and presents its approach to developing solutions to problems in different industrial fields. It also describes demonstration experiments in Japan that Fujitsu is participating in. Energy solutions that provide the infrastructure of smart cities are also described.

• Approach to Smart Community Development in Aizuwakamatsu City

Aizuwakamatsu City is a leading city in Japan for tourism with abundant nature, a long history and rich culture. By harnessing the benefit of its abundant nature, the City is promoting the installation of renewable energy facilities and a program by which local products are used locally. 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 moved forward together with the City for more than forty years to establish a production base for the semiconductor business. Through this relationship, Fujitsu has been engaged in the Aizuwakamatsu Area Smart Community Deployment Project since 2011. Here, we introduce the Aizuwakamatsu Area Smart Community Deployment Project which we are advancing with Aizuwakamatsu City and Tohoku Electric Power. We also explain activities such as visualizing energy with an energy control center and describe our aim to have regional vitalization which is mandatory for Smart Community development. Since we are introducing the Project for Promoting Introduction of Smart Communities of the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry here, we use the term "Smart Community" for "Smart City," a term which Fujitsu normally uses.

• Smart Community Reflecting Residents' Wishes: Example of Awaji Green Island

Recently it has been important to cope with various social issues in our country, such as a low birthrate and longevity, stagnation of primary industry, and energy and CO₂ emission problems. Challenges for Smart City include not only visualizing and increasing the efficiency of infrastructure with information and communications technology (ICT) for energy management, but also creating new value, such as a better quality of life (QOL), that considers residents' wishes and comfort. To create Smart City, it is necessary to visualize the wishes, contexts, and background of social issues held by both regional administrative bodies and residents, to share them, and to find solutions to solve the issues. Fujitsu applied Field Innovation methods to search for ideas of social value that are held by regional administrative bodies and residents by interviewing people and observing their activities. We tried to analyze the gap between them and to distill what the best community should be in the area. We introduce the Awaji Green Future Project as an example of Field Innovation activities.

• Manipulating Data to Maintain Transport Infrastructure

It is essential for the national government, prefectures and municipalities in Japan to properly and adequately maintain transportation in order to improve people's quality of life and be prepared for natural disasters. While the budget for maintaining infrastructure has been falling in the past couple of decades, it is becoming more and more important to have a scheme that makes it possible to efficiently and appropriately maintain such infrastructure. In view of statistics which show 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 various 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 data automatically by using portable telecommunication devices.

• Approach to Smart House Services

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 (HEMSs) 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' quality of life.

• Approach to Energy Management for Companies

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 consumers 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 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.

• Activities to Support Optimized Energy Management

Fujitsu has established an environmental reference model by using information and communications technology (ICT) products and solutions with the purpose of reducing the environmental impact on consumers and society and improving environmental efficiency. Fujitsu has designated four facilities within the Group as model sites — an R&D site, plant, office and data center — based on the concept of "Green Reference for Tomorrow." Various types of know-how are accumulated by putting the developed solutions into practice in these sites. "Energy Management" is a core solution in this activity, and Fujitsu has strove to continuously improve it since the activity started by optimally using the knowledge it has obtained through operating in these facilities. This paper introduces some models for three representative sites (R&D site, plant and office) among the Group's environmental reference models. It mentions cases that have produced successful results after a certain operation period and describes the shared approaches implemented in all the model sites.

• Solution to Utilization of Smart Meter Data

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 have also been requested to have 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.

• Approach to Electricity Systems Reform by Electricity Retail Solution

The Expert Committee for Electricity Systems Reform of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) developed a roadmap to promote the adoption of smart meters, have full liberalization of entry to electricity retail business and separate power distribution and transmission from a power company ; in this way, the electricity utility industry is facing a time of great change. Fujitsu has developed solutions which can promptly respond to changes by taking advantage of its know-how in the electricity sales business and systems. However, various issues have arisen with this reform, and a new structure that can solve them is needed. This paper first makes predictions about the electricity market which will change a lot in connection with this reform, while considering overseas examples and the market environment that is peculiar to Japan. Next, it introduces expected solutions that can be developed to cope with changes in the market environment, and describes their structure and ways to solve each issue.

• Plant Asset Management with Asset-centric Data Model

General electric power suppliers are working on various strategies to propose "a supply of inexpensive, steady electric power," and they have achieved their proposal. However, a tight energy supply due to the Great East Japan Earthquake has created an opportunity for Japan to review the risks present in the mechanism of securing a power supply by having large-scale power plants, and accelerate Electricity System Reform. This makes high dependency on thermal power generation, and the liberalization of power companies accompanying a legal severance has happened. General electric power suppliers are in a difficult situation because they must try to improve management and decrease costs more than before, while still maintaining a stable power supply. In these circumstances, we have developed an equipment management solution to help suppliers reduce their equipment maintenance cost and it is described in this paper. This solution is arranged by using a data model that centers on equipment (objects to be checked) that is the feature of the solution. This paper also describes the usefulness and importance of applying the data model to an equipment center.

• Trend and Technology Development of Demand Response

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. 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.

• Development of Technologies to Simulate Power Flow for Smart Grid

Energy problems are important social problems, 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 smart 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.

• New Approach for Environmental Future City Created by ICT: Sustainable City Network

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.

• Development of Quantitative Evaluation Method regarding Value and Environmental Impact of Cities

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 effect that ICT has on a city. This paper describes the evaluation method focusing on the evaluation concept, framework, and items for integration. In addition, it explains the impact evaluation method and shows a case study of introducing ICT solutions.