PURPOSE
The purpose of this document is to provide a high-level technical overview of the Eloncity Model for decentralized renewable energy projects. It assumes that the reader has a basic understanding of cloud computing, energy industry, decentralized applications, blockchain technology, crypto utility token, project financing, community development, energy regulatory and policy. A list of resources is provided for those who would like to develop a foundational understanding of blockchain technology and crypto utility token.
SCOPE
This document provides an overview of the Eloncity Model, a community-based decentralized renewable energy platform powered by blockchain ecosystem for building and deploying decentralized energy resources. It describes fundamental problems that the Eloncity Model seeks to address, key building blocks of the Eloncity solutions, target markets, and an implementation roadmap for realizing the Eloncity vision. The information in this document is intended for informational purposes only. Eloncity may make improvements or changes to the products, architectural design, or programs described in this document at any time without notice.
OVERVIEW
Our modern life depends on the vast electric grids to power everything from light bulbs to mass transit subways. Despite tremendous strides in technological innovation, the existing grid is largely built on an aging design. This design is essentially a centralized grid architecture based on large power generation plants in remote locations that are connected to the customer sites through a complex labyrinth of transmission and distribution (T&D) network. The coordination of electricity production in alternating current (AC) combined with delivery through the complex T&D network is managed by regional system operators or independent system operators (ISOs). The ISOs must balance not only the electricity production and consumption in real time, but also ensure the electricity produced remotely is transported to customer sites without running into congestions on the vast T&D network. While the current electric power grids are a marvel of engineering feats, this enormously complex centralized power grid design is showing its age. Today’s centralized power grids face significant challenges in providing safe, reliable, secure, and affordable energy services.
Eloncity Features
DECENTRALIZED RENEWABLE GENERATION
Whether electricity generation is decentralized energy depends on where it is generated. Decentralized energy system generates electricity where it is needed. On the other hand, the centralized grid generates electricity in large remote power plants, then the electricity must then be transported over long distances at high voltage to the customer sites for consumptions. It does not matter what technology is employed, whether it is used in connection with an existing grid or a remote village, or whether the power comes from a clean renewable source or burning fossil fuel or a nuclear power plant: if the electricity generator is ‘on-site’ or ‘locally’, then it is decentralized energy. This means that decentralized energy could include technologies that polluted the environment such as diesel generators. However, the Eloncity Model builds upon the premise of using local renewable energy to fulfill local demands.
The Eloncity Model employs local renewable resources to mitigate risk to the environment and public health while increasing the local power system resilience and adaptability. The renewable generation technologies of Eloncity Model include solar PV, windmills plus other generation technologies optimized for local renewable resources and suitable for deployment in the target community.
DIRECT CURRENT MICROGRIDS
The bulk of modern power grids distribute electrical energy in AC because AC voltage can be easily changed with transformers. The flexibility of changing AC voltage levels allows the AC power to be transmitted through power lines efficiently at high-voltage low-current to minimize energy loss due to the resistance of long transmission wires. Near the load centers such as cities or neighborhoods, the high voltage AC is stepped down to a lower, safer, voltage for use. However, AC was the only feasible format for transporting electricity over longdistance when the transformer was the only option to alter the voltage 130 years ago (to harness power from Niagara Falls17. There are numerous disadvantages of the AC grids such as the required costly ancillary services to ensure the quality of delivered AC power, power losses in the T&D wires, vulnerabilities of the large T&D network sprawling over vast areas. The required ancillary services, T&D losses, outages due to grid failures, cost utilities and the world economies hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Unfortunately, the ratepayers bear the cost of the inefficient AC grids.
With the advances in power electronics, DC/DC converters are used to change the DC voltage at significantly higher conversion efficiency, typically greater than 98 percent. The DC networks allow load sites to tie into the networks much more efficient as long as interface voltages are the same. DC power does not require the complex and costly frequency and phase synchronization. BESS deployed in the Eloncity microgrids acts as the spinning reserve to maintain the required DC voltage levels with the advantages of significantly faster response in term of seconds versus minutes of the traditional fossil fuel peaker generators of the centralized AC grids. Moreover, BESS would be deployed directly on customer-site or within the communities, which allows BESS operation to be highly tailored to the local supply-demand profiles.
The power flows in Eloncity microgrids are managed by DCbuses Scheduler deployed throughout the microgrid service areas. Each customer site is connected to the endpoints on the DCbus, where these endpoints function as DC/DC converters and voltage regulator. The endpoints maintain high power quality levels for each customer site. When the endpoints detect excessive intermittent loads or power exports from customer sites, the endpoints would temporarily disconnect the deviated customer site from the local system, thus mitigating intermittencies propagating through the microgrid. The granular power flows management of an Eloncity microgrid offers superior delivered power quality as compare to existing centralized AC grids or other AC microgrids.
The size of a DC network is also a critical factor for the quality of the power delivered. The service radius of an Eloncity microgrid will be optimized around the one-mile service radius. Since all renewable energy is produced natively in DC, therefore a microgrid based on DC power architecture would more be efficient and able to provide higher quality delivered power as compare to an equivalent AC microgrid or the centralized AC grid. However, the Eloncity Model can be easily optimized for existing built environment with existing AC grid infrastructure. The Foundation will collaborate with the local utility and community to provide tailored Eloncity Model for each project site.
DC POWERED HOMES
Modern home appliances that use motors are equipped with electronic variable frequency drives (VFD) to maximize energy efficiency. The appliance’s built-in inverter draws 100-120 Vac or 208-240 Vac from the AC wall sockets and electronically rectifies the AC power into DC power. Then the inverter transforms the rectified DC power back to AC at the various desired frequency to support the varying appliance loads. The lighter the workload is, the lower the frequency is set. In other words, our modern appliances are essentially operated in some form of DC power.
Similarly, most modern home and office equipment, (e.g., laptop, LED lights, LCD TV, etc.) run on low DC voltage through transformer-less power adapters. These adapters convert AC power from the wall sockets into DC powers by using high-frequency power transistors such as the metal-oxide-semiconductor-field-effect transistor (MOSFET). In fact, all of the MOSFET-based AC/DC converters are fully compatible with DC power, which means these DC adapters would operate normally when they are plugged a 75V - 300V DC power socket.
So, why do we still need AC at homes and offices? s explained earlier, electricity for the mass markets has been around since the 1880s in AC primarily to support the needs to transport mass-produced electricity from large power plants located remotely from the load centers in the cities. As a result, all of the existing appliances are made to be AC compatible, even though they operate in native DC power.
It is ironic that we convert locally renewable DC power to AC and then reconvert back to DC to powers our devices while wasting a significant amount of precious energy in repeated AC-DC-AC power conversions. Adopting DC power for our home and workplaces can mitigate these ongoing wastes.
200 to 400 Vdc can be used to directly power modern VFD-driven heating and air-conditioning, refrigerators, washing machines, and other typical home and office appliances. Similarly, practically all of today’s information technology devices are already equipped with solid state power adapter, and they can be powered directly by 200Vdc. Therefore, the Foundation proposes all newly constructed buildings to be powered by DC so that local renewable resources can power our devices and appliances efficiently and eliminate wasteful AC-DC-AC conversions.
The Foundation will collaborate with manufacturers, standard bodies, customer advocate groups, and other stakeholder groups to introduce the universal plugs and sockets for 200Vdc so that, everywhere we go, we will be plugged into much more energy efficient energy infrastructure. This approach is consistent with advanced energy policies in key markets, such as California, to make energy efficiency as the first loading order in term of energy procurements and system planning. The envisioned new DC plugs and sockets, called the 200VDC Connectors, will have a built-in safety mechanism to eliminate hazard such as electric arcing. The 200VDC Connector may also include data pins for exchanging device information in smart home and smart building. The device information would be sent to the building’s power systems so that these devices can be seamlessly integrated into the building’s intelligent demand-side management. The demand-side management refers to the management of customer energy demands to ensure the local energy supply and demand are harmonized. However, the 200Vdc Connector standard may take significant efforts and time, therefore Eloncity’s marketing and education efforts in the next two to three years would be focused on major appliances with high energy consumption such as HVAC, water heating, clothes washer, and dryers. The near-term development efforts will focus on high-energy appliances because these are the low-hanging fruits that yield significant energy savings with the DC power system. Moreover, hard-wired equipment such as HVAC does not need the new standardized DC Connector to take advantage of the DC power system.
Information ICO
Ticker: ECT
Token type: ERC20
ICO Token Price: 1 ECT = 0.12 USD
Fundraising Goal: 33,000,000 USD
Total Tokens: 1,000,000,000
Available for Token Sale: 32%
Know Your Customer (KYC): YES (PERIOD ISN'T SET)
Сan't participate: CHINA, USA
Min/Max Personal Cap: 0.1 ETH / 3 ETH
Accepts: ETH