NTT Energy and Environment Systems Laboratories

Project

• Energy Systems Project

Up to now

• Overall efficiency is exceedingly poor when miscellaneous appliances-equipment for electric generation such as fuel cells and solar cells, equipment such as air conditioners and hot water heaters powered by electricity-are all operated separately according to their own schedules.
• Unfortunately there is no way to store excess electricity that is produced by solar cells when the sun is shining.
• It is also nearly impossible to reheat bath water using fuel cells.

At the NTT

R&D is underway on an energy control system that determines the optimal schedule for operating multiple energy-generating/using appliances based on forecasts of demand and of natural energy power generation.

This system determines the optimal schedule for operating energy equipment that minimizes CO₂ emissions and energy costs for energy networks that include a mix of energy sources(solar cells, fuel cells, storage batteries, etc.). Conventional scheduling schemes only considered the simple attributes of energy sources, but our system is far more intelligent. By adopting the Genetic Algorithm, the Tabu Search, and other meta-heuristic techniques, our system factors in the particular characteristics and constraints of multiple distributed energy equipments achieves a solution to the optimal schedule for operating appliances.

Point!

Because multiple constraints are taken into account, the optimal smooth time sequence of energy sources such as a fuel cell can be scheduled.