Blockchain-Enabled AI for Smart Grid Optimization in Africa - Nnamdi Onuigbo

Um so I'm going to be calling on our next speaker who is speaking on blockchain enabled AI for smart grid optimization in Africa. He is Nambdi Onuigo the researcher from African researchers network. Please a round of applause for him. Thank you very much.

So my name is Nam Dono. Um I'm a researcher with the African Researchers Network. Um primarily I'm a lecturer uh electrical electronics engineering with a masters in power and sustainable energy. Um then I did a dissertation on robotics which now landed me here. Yeah.

So but I have interest in IoT internet of things as regards smart grid in Africa. All right. So yeah you are welcome. We are going to fast about this. Apologies for that in advance.

So we are just going to cover just a few things. It's a few slides we can through it. The lecturer me is trying to be fast about it. Okay. So, um if you are here already, I'm very sure you do know what blockchains are.

Yeah, you should. I think um but how do we link blockchain to smart grid? First of all, we start with what what are grid systems? We are familiar with Nigerian system. When it comes to grid systems where we have grid failures, I can tell you that because they're not smart.

So but with our smart grid system what we cons what we do is we with a gra um smart grid system what it does is it takes different sources of energy primarily Nigeria only deals predominantly with hydro ki dam we are used to it and then we have companies coming up with solar energy you know where they mount it on top of your roof and then you generate electricity from there Um, but what a smart grid does is it comes in and it takes different different sources of energy. So we could have the hydro coming in, we could have the solar coming in, we could have the tama, we could have the wind from um um either onshore or offshore. So we could have those ones coming in and then the grid decides on well yeah of course we've programmed it to do so it decides on what best to do with this information. So if we have a couple of houses and these houses some are producing electricity from different sources all this electricity comes into a particular grid and then this grid channels it to different other houses that probably don't have enough electricity or enough capacity to um I think I'm faster than my slide. Uh have a capacity to produce electricity.

So yeah that's where smart grid comes in. uh it takes it takes different energy sources and then operates on it. But how does blockchain come in? We already know that um my how do I go back? Okay.

Yeah, we already know that uh blockchain is in the heart of transactions. When you think blockchain, you think uh crypto mostly because when I said I was going to present the paper, someone said, "Oh, you're having a crypto conference." All right. So yeah um we have that knowledge gap which is a different topic on its own. So so how does the blockchain come in?

We know it decentralized. So we know that we cannot lie to it. It cannot give us false information. So but with this we have uh a system where this the the blockchain understands that I'm taking say for example I'm going to use five watts from this building. I'm taking five watts of electricity from this building and I'm channeling it to maybe landmark center.

So it's been programmed to do that. Uh so at every point at this building generates say we start from generating with this building. This building say maybe generates about 10 and then it takes the 10 uh it it takes five of the 10 to operate and then it needs to send out the other five. That's where the blockchain comes in. It tells you okay you've generated five.

I mean you generated six which means you need to let go of one. Landmark center receives the one but it might not go to landmark center it goes to whichever houses or whichever establishment companies or whatever that is connected to the smart grid who the smart grid grid is selling to. So if you have a house and you are generating electricity via um solar energy for example you could sell to the smart grid. So that by that you've already reduced the cost of your own electricity and then you're making profit from what you are generating from nature. So that's where smart grid comes in.

It tells us okay um I take this information from this house. I have a couple of houses and I have a couple of uh uh different uh um uh energy sources. It operates on it and then it distributes it to whoever is connected to the smart grid system. Yeah. Okay.

So it is going to be fast. So that's what the blockchain is going to be doing for us. But then it doesn't stop here because um we are living in the time of AI. Yeah. So and then we need to train a smart smart grid.

He's already smart based on what he has. But he needs to be trained to be able to let us know that there is a problem because most times what we have here is uh we just wake up and we don't have light for two weeks and then we know from the news that the grid failed. But with a smart grid, with a blockchain embedded in a smart grid, it tells this grid that oh you are going to fail tomorrow. So he knows that he's going to fail. He knows why he's going to fail.

And then he sends in the engineers to fix the problem because you know he's already been trained to say, "Oh, if 1 + 1 is not adding up to two, there is a problem." And then I can only hold the system for another two days. So I need to send an alert that something is about to be wrong. So that way we'll be able to fix the problem of grid before it happens. Either you shut it down or you reduce the um the load on it.

or however it is. That's what uh some of the advantages of having a smart grid in the system does. Um okay. Um I already talked about how AI can come in. Um by training the model, you are letting us know that you're letting the model know that you're autonomous on your own.

Just give us information so we can operate. We make it better for so that way we won't have houses going off, lights going off um based on uh energy not working. Yeah. So this not it is a new concept but it's not really a new concept you know it's not been done in Africa. We have smart we have smart cities in Kenya.

Yeah. And then we have some other ones in around Ethiopia I think. But we have these systems already working in a couple of countries. We have in Australia Australia we have another um well a couple of countries. We have a lot of countries going through this.

So uh we could actually implement it in this country you know starting from where we yeah so yeah basically let me round up um yeah so with blockchain in smart grid we will not be having power failure as we are having power failure and we do have abundance of uh every other sources of energy and if you are a science student you will know that uh Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. You can only transmit it. And the very simple one is between potential energy and kinetic energy. Potential kinetic. So we do know that um because we cannot uh generate it, we uh transmit it.

We know that we have abundance of sun here. We have abundance of uh wind. So we could have easily have three sources of energy without even you know stressing about it. We have the hydro that is already in operational. We have the solar that is constantly there.

Then we have the wind. We just need to channel that. Now getting these three through an uh IoT system, we can now have a smart grid system that enables uh us to we have the capacity to do this. As a matter of fact, that's what I'm um getting. So yeah well we have some challenges which includes some technical we have to also talk about policy which will also be a challenge and then of course we have the financial aspect of it which also is challenge but there are so many opportunities that know that this slide is not enough to accommodate cuz we do have every opportunity to get this.

So yeah, I belong to a group of researchers, African researchers network, uh where we have people from different African countries where we research about um everything and everything really. I'm currently the engineering uh the director of research in engineering with African researchers network. So you could reach us here and um this is where you could reach me on LinkedIn should you want to know more about this and what we've done so far and what we plan on doing. Thank you very much. [Applause]

Thank you. Thank you so much.