The final student in the DAMOC student exchange just finished her stay at TU Dresden.

The Master’s student, studying Renewable Energy, from Stellenbosch University visiting TU Dresden to get exposure on Smart Grid Technology. Her activities included taking courses at the computer science as well as the economics department. The knowledge gained at the economics department was on stakeholder management which is essential for sustainable technology development.

Further, she took a project which was focused on the challenges slowing deployment of wireless sensor networks for smart grid networks which range from big data management to energy resource constraints and data reliability. The project further studied the new opportunities generated by these challenges; the big data management issue, stream processing on fog computer architecture was presented and micro- energy harvesting, i.e. vibrations and magnetic fields along the electrical power infrastructure to overcome the resource constraints challenges. Overall, the entire experience encouraged her to further research on this field.

From March to June another exchange student from TU Dresden visited the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology. He also assisted the development of teaching material for practical labs in the new smart grid courses on data security and data protection. Specifically his tasks included:
– Research on the subject of security and privacy issues of smart grid components, in particular user behaviour tracking with smart meters 
– Development of a tool for real-time measurement of load data provided via the internet by a solar panel system on-site
– Development of a tool for visual analysis of open source energy consumption data
– Conception of possible tasks for future students making use of the developed tools 
– Collection of material and examples to convey and motivate, why privacy protection and data security are important for electricity infrastructure