SIEMENS

Großbreitenbach is a small, picturesque resort town in Germany’s Thuringian Forest. It is also part of one of the most revolutionary and complex energy projects of the present day. Not that the town’s 2,700 inhabitants would see it that way. For them, Großbreitenbach’s chief claim to fame is being the birthplace of German winter sports legends Manuela and Andrea Henkel, both Olympic and world champions in their respective disciplines.

For some time now, however, there has been a cloud on Großbreitenbach’s horizon. The reason for this is a decision by the federal government to progressively replace current electricity generating systems with renewable sources of energy. With the country’s last nuclear power station due to be taken out of service in 2022, Germany is looking to boost its proportion of green power to 35 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. “This amounts to an unprecedented shakeup of the power industry — a shakeup that is unparalleled in its complexity,” says Stephan Kohler, head of the German Energy Agency. What makes this ambitious plan so complex is that it will require huge amounts of renewable energy, new grid technology, and new energy storage systems.

For the people of Großbreitenbach, that means agreeing to a huge overhead transmission line right on their doorstep. The line will carry power from wind farms in northern Germany to consumers in the south. At present, local resistance is high, and action groups have been formed. In the wider context, however, each link in the country’s energy chain — from offshore wind farms in the North Sea, to small towns in Thuringia, and the vision of a green future — is connected. “That’s what makes everything so complicated,” says Kohler.

The people of Großbreitenbach might take a jaundiced view of their allotted role in Germany’s energy revolution, but the mood 400 kilometers further south couldn’t be more positive. For instance, in the village of Wildpoldsried in the Allgäu region of Bavaria, the town’s 2,500 inhabitants have established a pilot renewable energy economy that would be the envy of any small town. With its photovoltaic panels, biomass digesters, and wind power plants, Wildpoldsried already produces twice the amount of electricity it consumes. The downside is that all this surplus energy severely strains the local grid. Depending on the amount of sun and wind available, output can fluctuate by as much as 40 megawatts over a period of 30 minutes.

With a view to improving grid stability, Wildpoldsried’s nearest utility — Allgäuer Überlandwerk — is testing new technology in collaboration with Siemens. Studies have focused on the use of smart grid systems to coordinate the complex processes within the grid as energy from renewable sources is fed in. Automated technology supported by software agents is being tested to manage power flows and balance input against consumption. In a later phase, the project will incorporate 32 electric cars that will be available for leasing by Wildpoldsried inhabitants. The vehicles’ batteries will provide intermediate storage for surplus electricity.

This growing complexity also extends to other areas of modern life. In our cities, for example, different elements infrastructures are woven together in an intricate network. Such networks become increasingly difficult to visualize and predict as more people make use of them. By 2015 the world will have at least 25 major metropolitan areas with over 10 million inhabitants. The complexity of even the largest of anthills, which may have up to two million creatures, is modest by comparison. In such complex systems, even minor changes may have major consequences. The construction of a new subway line, for example, may have a huge impact on nearby electricity, gas, and water supply systems — not to mention local residents. To date — and much to the regret of urban planners — it has proved difficult to predict such interactions and their effects.

Simulating Cities. Engineers from Siemens Corporate Technology (CT) are attempting to unravel these complicated interdependencies. To this end, they have developed a software platform that creates a virtual conurbation in its entirety and enables engineers to plan and simulate modifications to infrastructures. With a few clicks, scientists can create streets. The software shows them what impact new construction work will have on a neighborhood, including potential traffic congestion and effects on a district’s energy balance. Researchers are also using the software to deduce socioeconomic indicators such as employment rates and per capita economic output. And there are plans to incorporate local building regulations and energy efficiency requirements into the simulations, as well as to add long-term factors such as climate and demographic trends, which can have an impact on proposed construction work.

Cities seem complicated enough on the surface, but the real challenges often lie hidden underground, where a maze of water mains extends like a huge spider’s web. As a city grows, so too does its labyrinth of pipelines — and the problem caused by leakage. London’s water network, for example, is 30,000 kilometers in length. Even affluent cities are plagued by water losses. Were London to reduce leakage from its mains by a mere one percent, the water saved would suffice to supply an additional 224,000 people.

In developing countries, the situation is much worse. According to the World Bank, total losses due to leaking water pipes amount to 45 million cubic meters a day. Added to this crass waste is the problem of diminishing water quality, since cracks in pipes are an open invitation to contamination. Small leaks are difficult and expensive to locate, in large part because of the relative scarcity of flow meters and similar monitoring devices.

Siemens engineers have now come up with a system that is capable of automatically detecting even the smallest cracks in large pipeline networks. The system measures water usage during periods of low consumption, such as at night, in various parts of the network, thereby determining respective reference values. If these values are subsequently exceeded, thus indicating a leak, the system sounds an alarm.

Smart technology can be used not only to monitor drinking water supplies but also to ease the flow of traffic. In some places this rising tide of metal is threatening to choke our streets. There are nearly seven million vehicles in Jakarta, for example, and these are joined by over 1,100 new cars and motorcycles every day. The resulting gridlock in Indonesia’s capital is very costly. According to a study conducted by environmental expert Firdaus Ali from the University of Indonesia, damage to the city’s economy caused by traffic congestion amounts to around $3 billion per year — all due to lost productivity and growing healthcare costs associated with poor air quality.

But there are rays of hope. For the 8.5 million inhabitants of the Chinese city of Wuhan, for instance, road travel has recently improved, thanks among other things to a sophisticated traffic management system from Siemens. A total of 420 intersections, turnoffs, and junctions have been equipped with cameras to monitor the flow of traffic. Data is sent to control centers, where computers calculate the optimal switching times for traffic signals, so as to prevent traffic jams and other obstacles from forming wherever possible.

Berlin also uses digital technology from Siemens to control its traffic. In Germany’s largest city, one of the world’s most modern traffic management centers went into operation in 2005. It provides fully automated control of over 1,700 traffic lights and 300 sign gantries, based on real-time traffic data and time of day.

Striving for Simplicity. Road, water, and power networks are not the only systems that continue to grow in size and complexity, thus requiring increasing support from sensors and computers capable of evaluating their real-time condition and optimizing their functions. In the broader realm of machine-to-machine communication, analysts from market research company IDC have calculated that by 2015 a total of 15 billion intelligent devices will be networked, with this figure projected to rise to over 50 billion by 2020. This trend poses a variety of new challenges, including the question of how to make such devices as simple and as intuitive as possible to operate, while ensuring that they remain invulnerable to hackers. This convergence of needs is a major challenge. At Siemens Corporate Technology’s Usability Laboratory researchers are responding by coming up with ways of making complex systems easier to use. Their projects range from CT scanners to new apps designed to simplify the recharging of electric cars.

All the same, when it comes to implementing major projects such as the overhead transmission line near Großbreitenbach, far more than simplicity is needed. The Swiss have shown how radically-differing opinions can be reconciled. Plans to build a recycling center in the canton of Aargau initially met with stiff local resistance. However, by the end of the consultation process even those communities most affected were in favor of the project. The “trick” used by the authorities was to let the citizens themselves decide.