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Production of every kind requires power; and
here power is used to mean every form of energy by which production
can be supported. The most common form of power source is electrical
preferably. Of course direct heat can be used but such requires
manage application of the heat to the end of accomplishing the
product production. In effect then
energy sources of
all forms must be identified and leveraged. With the selection
of the endemic energy sources, there is the need for a well-designed
power grid. Of course, this requires that the system be
efficaciously computerized.
The issues of the adoption and adoption-impact
analysis of each of the energy sources have been extensively
addressed, and as such any society can effectively draw from the
analyses so provided. However, for the consideration here in which a
society-wide applicable energy source is of interest, the
consideration is being restricted accordingly. In this
context, then it is recognized that effectively invariably every
society has at least one of three of the primary Conventional Energy
sources: Water Power, Wind power, Solar Power; and at least one of
the two derivative Conventional Energy sources: Hydrogen
gas. Evident from this
consideration is that only Solar Power is available to every society
even if the degree of sunshine is society-specific being dependent
on the geographical location and
the climatic conditions of the society. Effectively then for
the consideration of developing Power Infrastructure for supporting
businesses in the context of the presentation here, the recommended
default available energy source,
Solar Power.
Yet,
it must be understood that the focus on the default energy source is
strictly contextual, and every society should build on the form of
energy sources most abundant within that society.
Update Post: 05_12_2008:
Addendum
With the resolution of the form of
energy source for adoption, comes the actual design of the power
distribution network system. The design challenge here is often
iterative and computation intensive although this is often not
obvious to the developers.
Often the design of the power network
also is simply two dimensional being designed with an aerial view.
In this form of design, a flat surface is usually assumed and a flat
network design is developed. By this design methodology,
communities are conceptually
represented as a network with each building in the community
represented as a node of the network. In a second-tier view of the
same design, the collection of communities is treated as network yet
again with each community being treated as a node of this resultant
network of the second-tier abstraction.
The power demand for each
community is then evaluated through a network analysis of the
distribution needs. In performing the network
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analysis of the power needs of
the group of communities, each community is associated with its total power consumption, with
the node representing the community as a form of power sink.
However,
detailed analyses of the intercommunity second-tier abstract network
is quite critical, in that the abstraction provides the basis for
addressing several prospective concerns and all of which must be
analyzed. First, with the second-tier abstraction of a network, a
more reasoned assessment of the overall Reliability or Redundancy of
the design with respect to each community power source interface can
be effectively determined. Second, design bottle-necks that could be
resulting from future population growth can also be analyzed during
the design through the use of Perturbation Analysis based on wide
swings of power usage variations in each community. Third, such
analysis should also allow for the assessments of the global impact
of node clusters-demand changes during times of extreme needs and
rapid population growth. Node-clusters inclusion in the analyses of
the overall System Reliability as opposed to community interface
Reliability should further enhance the confidence level in the
design. Admittedly, the two
dimensional design of power network has for most purpose been very
efficacious, and therefore is successful. Yet, there is room to
improve on this design approach by adopting multi-dimensional design
for the power transmission network.
The first phase of such multi-dimensional
design would consist of layering of networks. To boot, the standard
two dimensional design presented above is decomposed into
topological units by appropriately applicable criteria of
segmentation. This can readily be done starting with as many
selection maps as identified segments of the community. The network
designer can not develop a community based network for each
topological unit of the community as extracted with the selection
mapping. Each of these networks that is representative of the
community is then layered: The topological networks are then stacked
in the Euclidean geometric sense. Next each of these layers of
networks are then provided with Layer interfaces.
This first phase re-structuring of the
initial two- dimension network design effectively transforms the
design into a three-dimensional design to begin with. This, of
course, provides the advantage of making each network smaller and
therefore more manageable with respect to maintenance and
administration. Even more significant is that such layered design
exposes additional layers for implementing Community Power Source
Interfaces and thereby enhancing the Reliability and Redundancy of
the design The inter- layer
Interfaces, needless to state, are very important unto themselves as
the three dimensional design of the otherwise two dimensional design
is by the layering repackaged into a networks cluster at the
community unit level, and allows for the |
rapid redistribution at the
community for variable power needs of the various segment of the power
consumers as defined through the topological maps. Besides, now
additional Perturbation Analysis enabling further determination of the
robustness of the design can be performed.
Two additional situations
invariably obtains from the three dimension design: layers in a given
community can be connected to non-comparable layers of a different
community. Each such interconnection obviously leads to different power
distribution network. There is now evolving rather implicitly a
combinatorial group of networks, the count of which would be
proportional to the number of communities in the given geographical area
of the deployment of the network.
Obviously the design does get
invariably more computation intensive but indisputably also more robust
with respect to power fluctuation and accommodation of population growth
and decline.
Irrespective of the form of the network, a well designed network
should have an effective means of controlling the preferential
distribution of power, and
consequentially, the management of the distribution
of the power to
the different sections of the community depending on the real-time
demand of the different sections.
This situation is
derivative of the engineering design of power distribution networks.
The design as presented so far, implicitly assumed steady demand of
power followed by Perturbation Analysis. Under ideal conditions, the
flow of power to the different home-nodes of the community networks
is consistent with design specification
at different sections of the networks. The design specifications,
however, usually are based on average, or normal, living conditions. The ideal design
with for steady state supply of power is often effected with
switches to
achieve the design conditions. Yet, living conditions are never
really normal or average: There always develop periods of extreme
conditions, significantly different from the design conditions,
necessitating controlling of the power distribution. Of course, the
switches also has offered the
advantage of permitting the electromechanical control of the
switches for the power
distribution during off-design living conditions.
Further, with the
prevalence of computer systems of different degrees of complexity, a
developing community can readily adopt community management system
for managing the power distribution demands that arise during
off-design living conditions. The implementation cost of such technologies also has
fallen so low that every community really need to adopt such
technologies. Even the cost conscious community can, start off with
bank of PC-servers running computation intensive switches controller software. |
