Environmental sustainability of information and communication technologies for advanced metering and home area networks

The challenges imposed on the current electric power grid have led to the need of an improved and smarter electric power grid, i.e., the smart grid. The smart grid will enable not only a bidirectional transfer of electricity, but also a two-way data exchange between various systems essential for a correct operation of the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and home area network (HAN) applications. The realization of the smart grid will require the deployment of additional information and communication technology (ICT) equipment in various domains. This will unavoidably lead to an increase in electricity consumption. In order to obtain a meaningful environmental sustainability analysis, additional to the operation phase, various other ICT equipment life cycle stages, i.e., raw material extraction and processing, manufacturing and assembly, recycling and disposal, as well as transportation, have to be included in the assessment as well. In this paper, we present an exergy-based life cycle assessment (E-LCA) of ICT equipment for smart grids involved in AMI and HAN applications. Based on a model developed for the city of Vienna, it is shown that the cumulative embodied and operational exergy consumption distribution and their development significantly differ for the AMI and the AMI/HAN scenario.