THE CHALLENGES OF ENERGY INFORMATION SYSTEM:

An attempt to effectively have a databank of energy sources for proper planning, management and
utilization.

Abdulkareem Ozi Aliyu and Jaafaru Yahaya Bawa

Energy Commission of Nigeria, Abuja

ABSTRACT

Nigeria is Africas energy giant. Energy is a very crucial ingredient for development and has always been a vital
and indispensable input to the economic needs of our present civilization. Prior to the 1960s, energy utilization
consisted very predominately of non-commercial energy, namely: fuel wood, charcoal, agricultural wastes and
residues as well as solar (thermal) radiation. The structure of energy utilization has drastically changed since then.
Energy information system is a priority area, because every sector needs energy, so an integrated development
approach is needed in that regard. A well informed person, organization or Nation will be knowledgeable to use,
trade in or train on energy with maximum benefit being derive from. Energy information system has enabled new
energy sources and utilization be linked to people. We have moved beyond stand-alone computers or component
to build large, integrated distributed information system that are

in service to our society. It has become of paramount importance to build the energy system of the future in Nigeria
as well as Africa. This paper looks at a society required systems we can count on; that is designing a new
generation of energy information system that will make todays applications and information reliable and secure,
to aid effective planning and research.

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Energy information system can be defined as the combination of people, hardware, software, communication
devices, network and data resources that process (storing, retrieving, transforming information) data and
information for the purpose of adequately monitoring (quantitative and qualitative) and analyzing (quantitative
and qualitative) aspects of energy sources, processing and utilization. Energy information system has amplified
our intellectual and physical abilities more than anything since the development of the written word. Technology
marvels such as the internet and global positioning system became possible only with the advances made in
information technology. Today there are over eight billion computers in the world. Most are embedded invisibly
in products, making goods and service safer, more secure, flexible and energy-efficient and less expensive than
ever before. Quantitative changes in performance and affordability have led to qualitative changes in application
of computing.

A defining characteristic of our age is our reliance on vast, complex, and intertwined energy information networks.
These networks enable the exchange of energy analysis and control of energy information on a scale and of a
quality that has never before been realized. Energy information networks link elements in our electrical grid and
energy communication systems. They support the critical infrastructure that is responsible for much planning,
management and productivity behind our energy economic growth in recent years, and they provide the foundation
for the quality of life we enjoy.

In future, since every sector needs energy, we can expect our computational energy infrastructure to offer an even
more impressive range of energy economic benefits as it grows to include billions of people worldwide. These
new benefits will be facilitated by advances in electronic and optical communication.

1.1 CHALLENGES

The need to build-up a committed Network: Energy information is usually disseminated slowly and, in
some cases unevenly.
Experience of cognitive disability: Stress, fatigue and emotion reduces decision-making capabilities.
Shortage of skills and training ability to process data and derive energy information, as well as to
deploy highly adaptive communication capabilities through which otherwise separate entities can share
energy information through coordinated transmissions

2.0 SELF-ADAPTIVE ENERGY INFORMATION SYSTEM

With the energy challenges facing us, we need to have greater access to modern energy which will make us to
achieve the poverty reduction goals of the millennium declaration, so it is important to establish an energy
information system that would be used to monitor the position of Nigeria energy sources and utilization in the
context of regional and global trends in the availability of energy commodities, especially price fluctuation of
individual energy sources.

Perhaps there is the need to mention that with modern energy information system, network reliability and security
will be increased by these systems that observe the current condition of the global network and individual
applications and adopt to deliver target levels of security and availability/reliable information. These tasks would
be performed without or with minimal human intervention. The goal is to achieve a mean time repair that is
accomplished in electronic time scales (seconds and microseconds), rather than human time scales (minutes and
hours).

If a distributed denial-of-service attack is launched: A Denial of Service (DOS) attack is an attack that is mounted
for the purpose of disabling systems that provide network services, rather than to steal data or inflict damage. The
targets of the attack can be network servers or network routers. The DoS attack prevents the system from
responding to legitimate requests, thus impeding network functions. The attack is usually mounted through one
of the three methods described below:

Flooding a network with data to consume all available bandwidth.

Sending data designed to exploit known flaws in a network application.
Sending multiple service requests to a target system to consume its resources
For example, the energy system would replicate the service to alternate sites and coordinate the routing
infrastructure to route requests to new places. Similarly, if particular network links fail, the energy information
system might heal it-self by recruiting additional replicas and automatically retiring old ones.
The energy chapter of world energy outlook highlighted that there is need for better energy data collection,
including information on biomass use and its technologies. Over half of all the people living in Africa relied on
biomass for cooking and heating. Nigeria population relies primarily on biomass-fuelwood or charcoal, to meet
its residential energy needs. Expanded access to electricity in the coming decades, which low-income households
use primarily for lighting, is unlikely to reduce the demand for biomass in Nigeria. Therefore there is the need for
a self-adaptive and efficient energy information system to provide policy makers the tools with which to make
informed decisions on efficient energy use and alternative energy sources to ensure sustainable economic and
energy development both at a national and region level. As we gain experience with these networks, the attributes
of the energy information utilities required to realize these advances become increasingly well-defined, and these
include:

Global reach: Uniform service would be available and affordable worldwide.

Persistence: Energy data committed to the energy information system would be accessible in 100 years.
3.0 PERVASIVE AUDIT TRAILS OF ENERGY DATA SYSTEM

The mandate and architecture of energy information is to integrate Nigeria and Africa energy efforts, strengthen
regional co-operation and provide policy-makers with the tools to accelerate the penetration of modern energy
service across the continent. Audit trails are used to detect, analyze, and repair errors in human and data systems.
They are used to track hackers who penetrate servers, as well as to unwind energy financial transactions that go
awry. They can also be valuable in ensuring that privacy constraints are adhered to. Vast implored auditing
techniques are required to compare the robustness of computing and energy data systems. The simple ways found
to be demonstrative are:

Support short and medium term training programs and educate statisticians for Nigeria and
Africa energy scale cooperation.
Identify and empower relevant, appropriately qualified energy data contacts in national
administrations that will form the core network for building and maintaining Nigeria and
African energy information system.
Adopt an internationally recognized energy data frame work for Nigeria and Africa.
Promote creation of the necessary software systems and communication networks essential to
improve energy information system and build Africa wide energy information system, since
Africa is the only region with no such regional network. This is even more significant for
Africa, given the relatively small national market and the need for regional co-operation to
ensure energy security and attract needed investment.

3.1 DATA FUSION AND ANALYSIS

Processing energy data is just one element of energy information system safety net. The ability to face related data
from multiple sources to derive useful information is critical. The energy information system architecture must
therefore enable large-scale collection, archiving, and processing of live streams of energy data for on-line and
off-line analyses, decision-making, and dissemination.
The key technical challenges include

The security of the energy data system.

Privacy of individuals and related data.
Integrity and authenticity of data.
Well defined semantics for the behaviour of the information infrastructure under different
types of failure.
In other to facilitate higher-level inferences in data fusion.

There is a need for application-specific data fusion in the presence of insufficient and error-
prone data.
Risk analysis of confidence in the data.
Making inferences from faulty and insufficient data.
Analysis and interpretation of collected data in conjunction with information databases (that
could be often be out of date and/or have partial or incorrect information) are essential in
enabling sound decision-making for proper planning and management.
Other essential components of the energy information architecture include:

Novel data models.

Segmentation
Organizational methods for storing and mining collected energy data in conjunction with
existing databases.
Linking networks of energy and actuators with existing energy information systems would create a platform for
performing data mining, fusion, and management such energy data system would implore both the quality of
energy information available to energy planners and the speed with which they receive it.

Data fusion would provide critical assistance for:

Energy decision making.

Rapid energy planning and management.
Energy resources allocation.
The result would be a revolutionary enhancement of the efficient and effectiveness of the current 9-1-1 emergence
response system.

Although the Energy Commission of Nigeria who is currently responsible for the development, operation and
maintenance of a National Energy Databank for the country is closely working with Federal Ministry of Energy,
National Bureau of Statistics and other energy parastatals on the development of an energy and non-energy data
fusion.

3.2 ENERGY INFORMATION SYSTEM NETWORK

ARCHITECTURE AND SERVER-TO-SERVER COMMUNICATION

 ENERGY DATA

ENERGY DATA DEVELOPMENT

DEVELOPMENT SERVER SERVER

NIGERIAN EMBASSIES (ABROAD)

INTERNET

SITTDEC INTERNATIO
HUB UN SYSTEM NAL
HUB
WORLD BANK
DATABASE
S

ENERGY
ENERGY
DATABASE DATABASE
SECTORAL DATA BANKS
SERVER SERVER
LINE MINISTRIES

PARASTATALS, STATES, LGs

AND
4.0 UNDERSTANDABLE, DEPLOYABLE, AND USABLE
PRIVATE SECTOR
SECURITY OF ENERGY INFORMATION SYSTEM
ORGANISATIONS
What has been said on oil also applies to natural gas and to a lesser extent to coal. As a consequence, with the
growing dependence of large energy consuming in Nigeria on emerging economies, of which we still face
challenges related to good governance, a new aspect of energy information system becomes increasingly apparent.
Under these conditions and concerns, therefore raising the importance of energy information system becomes
another issue.

As our reliance on energy information system networks grows, so does our vulnerability. In many applications
today, the reliability and security of these systems is unacceptable, creating problems that range from lagging
productivity to dangerous vulnerability.

There are two qualities that we require for all energy information systems: security and reliability/availability.

All too often security policies are implemented mechanically, producing no real gains in security. We therefore
require new specification techniques for security policies that are meaningful to energy information system
administrators and end-users, so that security is deployed in a way that meets the expectations of users
administrators and security engineers.

The improved techniques should include:

Accommodating common operational scenarios in a straight forward way.

Business failure of a security service provider
The merger or fission of security administrative domain
Compromise of a critical resource: Because there is always a trade-off between security and convenience,
since there are opportunities for user-centered design to improve the acceptance and deployment of better
security

5.0 SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION TOOLS THAT REDUCE THE

FREQUENCY AND SEVERITY OF CONFIGURATION ERRORS

One characteristic of the Nigerian energy economy is interdependence: no region or country is totally self-
sufficient or self contained in all aspect of energy supply and demand. Thus in addition to Energy information
system having an adequate database covering indigenous energy commodities, enterprises and activities, it is
important to establish a set of new information systems which would be used to monitor the position of Nigerias
energy.

With all the advantage of energy information, it is important to appreciate that there are a lot of problems
associated with their popularization, commercialization and market, such problems include:

Difficulty in the minds of many people to accept or delve into new energy frontiers.
Lack of suitable information on energy and their advantages.
Not many people think of long term savings in fuel.
Human error is often cited as the cause for configuration errors in our energy systems. In reality, much of this so
called human error is not produced by carelessness or imperfect knowledge, but it has its roots in the design of
the energy information system and its corresponding administrative interface. Certainly, energy information
systems and their components will be more robust if we engineer them to require far less human intervention, and
to adapt and continue operating on their own under a wide range of conditions. Nonetheless, significant
improvement will accrue to energy data systems that are explicitly designed to work well with their constituencies
of users, administrators, and maintainers.

6.0 EXPECTED RESULTS

Global research: Uniform energy information for Nigeria and Africa would be available and affordable
worldwide.
Scalability: We would be able to increase the capacity of energy service by devoting additional energy
source.
Persistence: Data that we commit to the energy information system would be accessible in 100 years.
Efficient administration: There would be a very high ratio of users to support the energy information
system.
There would be changing requirement, technology and operation conditions: Our economy will benefit
from a more unified approach.
Common investment in energy and shared vision: It would encourage the development of a consistent
set of standards that would lead to a more efficient technical and societal integration of new energy
sources.
7.0 RECOMMENDATIONS

Nigeria should seek partnership, with public and private bodies and international organizations
dealing with other inter-African development, so as to create and maintain an Africa-wide
energy information system to facilitate the exchange of information between member countries
and regional organizations.
To support energy information system, it is to develop capacity-building programmes; it has a
role in mobilizing resources for energy sector development. In this respects, we should therefore
submit an official request for assistance from IEA, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
and The Latin American Energy Organization, through providing us with their questionnaires
and their databases, training of our statisticians to improve data collection in Nigeria and Africa.
We should strengthen high-level political support for the concept on improving energy statistics
in Nigeria and Africa. Also we need to emphasize on the quality of the data collected, and make
sure that we are able to maintain the data properly.
We should determine the information needs of decision-makers (in the Government and private
sector, and including investors), identify existing energy information systems relevant to
Nigeria and Africa, and determine how to learn from and build on these.
We should consider how to implement a network for gathering and distributing information that
has drawn inspiration from the networks created by other international organizations, keeping
in mind not to duplicate work done by others, or cause an unnecessary reporting burden on
Nigeria and African Governments.
We should also make a start in identifying the structural weakness in Governments that hinder
information gathering and distribution, and formulate (in cooperation with regional
organizations) an approach to build the required institutional capacity.
8.0 CONCLUSION

Meeting the challenges posed in this paper will require us to dramatically extend the frontier of our knowledge in
science and technology.

The aspiration that we have for our energy information system, the functionality that we desire and thus the
complexity of these information systems are constantly increasing. At the same time, our expectations for ease of
use and reasonable costs are similarly demanding and open-ended: Energy information system can never be
designed, implemented, installed, administered, and used too easily or too inexpensively.

Producing energy system for proper planning and management will always be viewed as a work in progress, rather
than as a destination with a definite end point.

If energy information systems are to be widely adopted, we must create meaningful metrics for information system
security and stability so that their attributes can be more widely understood and their development and operational
overhead can be justified.

9.0 REFERENCES

A conference series on Grand research challenges in information systems: Computing research Association
(2003). E-mail:info@cra.org

Africa Energy Commission: Report of the seminar on energy

information system for Africa: Algiers

(2003).

A.T. Sulaiman: Focusing on renewable energy sources in Nigerias

development strategy (Keynote Address, National

workshop on creating demand and removing barriers to

renewable energy market development in Nigeria, 2001).

C. Mandil: Executive Director International Energy Agency:

The International energy Agency and Africa.

Engr .D. A Bayero: Energy and related data Acquisition and Management

in the Petroleum and Gas sub-sector. (A paper

delivered at the workshop on the development of an

effective National Energy Data bank).