Keynote Lectures

Energy Internet - The Challenge of Smart Micro-Grids
Paolo Tenti, University of Padova, Italy, Italy

Guidelines for Eco-friendly Data Centres - Lessons learnt in Three European Research Projects on Data Centres Energy Savings
Giovanni Giuliani, HP Italy Innovation Centre, Italy, Italy

About Monitoring
Barbara Pernici, Politecnico di Milano, Italy, Italy

Open Innovation Platforms for Automobiles and Mobility Solutions
Venkatesh Prasad, Ford Motor Company, United States, United States

Abstract
Low-voltage distribution grids are experiencing an increasing proliferation of small-power energy sources (mostly PV units) owned by domestic end-users (prosumers, i.e., at the same time producers and consumers).
The current regulations enforce prosumers to feed their generated energy into the grid, and to disconnect if the grid parameters (voltage, frequency) outgo a given interval. These simple rules, however, misbehave in a situation, as the one currently experienced in Italy, where the installed PV power amounts to 20 GW and exceeds 12% of the total energy production. A smarter and more efficient management of the large amount of small energy contributions powered by prosumers requires a radical innovation of the operation codes in lowvoltage distribution grids.
In particular, implementing energy and data networking among the prosumers of a residential community allows the creation of smart micro-grids, which means sharing of resources among the entire community, trusted operation of the low-voltage grid, and aggregation of prosumers to empower their role versus other players of the electrical market (DSOs, utilities, traders, etc.). This gives rise to a new paradigm (the Internet of Energy) whereby communities of prosumers can implement peer-to-peer resource sharing, define common visions and strategies, organize themselves at various levels of aggregation, and play an authoritative role in the electrical market.
Individually, each prosumer can benefit of: modulation of generated and consumed power along the day, to take advantage of hourly tariffs; uninterruptible supply of domestic loads, even in case of grid failure; improved stabilization of local voltage; capability to feed power on-demand, based on request conveyed by the smart meter.
As a whole, smart micro-grids can provide: easy and flexible integration of renewable sources and storage devices; pervasive use of upfront ICT and power electronics technologies; reduction of carbon footprint; increase of distribution efficiency; savings for end-users and distributors; improved quality and reliability of electrical services; better exploitation of the electrical infrastructure. Moreover, the ICT platform will spur new services to the customers, and new roles and market shares for public administrations, utilities, traders, DSOs and territorial bodies.

Abstract
Data centres are becoming the key infrastructure elements in Smart Cities programs, as well as the foundation for any IoT and Big Data platform. The data centres are therefore - on one side - supporting in general the growth of ICT services, but - on the other side - are becoming more and more large energy consumers and contributors to GHG emissions. Also, some data centres tend to move back into (or nearby) the cities for reasons like avoiding network latency issues of critical real-time interactive applications, whereas Smart Cities have tight objectives of environment sustainability and renewable energy utilization. Therefore, data centres must maximize their ability to run at minimal environmental impact and to exploit the presence of clean (renewable) energy sources.

During the last years, the European Commission co-funded several research projects on data centre energy efficiency: this talk will initially present a brief summary of three of them, i.e. FIT4Green, All4Green and DC4Cities. Finally, based on the lesson learnt in these and other parallel projects, a set of guidelines will be presented to supporting data centres becoming more eco-friendly: first introducing energy-awareness in the data centre management, then helping to identify and plan enhancements in logistics, hardware, software and operations, finally examining useful metrics to evaluate the improvements and environment impact.

Abstract
Many Smart* approaches are based on an underlying monitoring infrastructure for providing the basis for assessing the current context of the system being considered and for taking decisions about the possible actions to be performed to get a better performance or to reduce the impact of the system being controlled. The talk will discuss issues related to monitoring, referring in particular to the datacenter and cloud environments, but also extending the discussion also to ambient-assisted living, and in particular issues related to managing monitoring data and to the selection of the appropriate monitoring variables will be considered. The potential of using monitoring data across applications will also be discussed.

Abstract
During the past five years Ford Motor Company has developed and used a number of platforms to reduce the barriers to innovation by both employee-innovators and third-parties. In this keynote, we will describe OpenXC, an open-source platform for developing software applications as well as accessories for automobiles. We will present examples of what has been created by the community using OpenXC and also show how it was used with several crowd-sourced innovation contest platforms to help shape solutions to mobility challenges in several locations around the world.