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Smart Energy

    The next few decades will see great changes in the way energy is supplied and used. In some major oil producing nations, 'peak oil' has already been reached, and there are increasing fears of global warming. Consequently, many countries are focusing on the switch to a low carbon economy. This transition will lead to major changes in the supply and use of electricity. Firstly, there will be an increase in overall demand, as consumers switch from oil and gas to electricity to power their homes and vehicles. Secondly, there will be an increase in power generation, not only in terms of how much is generated, but also how it is generated, as there is growing electricity generation from renewable sources. To meet these challenges, countries are investing in Smart Grid technology. This system aims to provide the electricity industry with a better understanding of power generation and demand, and to use this information to create a more efficient power network.

    Smart Grid technology basically involves the application of a computer system to the electricity network. The computer system can be used to collect information about supply and demand and improve engineer's ability to manage the system. With better information about electricity demand, the network will be able to increase the amount of electricity delivered per unit generated, leading to potential reductions in fuel needs and carbon emissions. Moreover, the computer system will assist in reducing operational and maintenance costs.

    Smart Grid technology offers benefits to the consumer too. They will be able to collect real-time information on their energy use for each appliance. Varying tariffs throughout the day will give customers the incentive to use appliances at times when supply greatly exceeds demand, leading to great reductions in bills. For example, they may use their washing machines at night. Smart meters can also be connected to the internet or telephone system, allowing customers to switch appliances on or off remotely. Furthermore, if houses are fitted with the apparatus to generate their own power, appliances can be set to run directly from the on-site power source, and any excess can be sold to the grid.

    With these changes comes a range of challenges. The first involves managing the supply and demand.

Sources of renewable energy, such as wind, wave and solar, are notoriously unpredictable, and nuclear power, which is also set to increase as nations switch to alternative energy sources, is inflexible. With oil and gas, it is relatively simple to increase the supply of energy to match the increasing demand during peak times of the day or year. With alternative sources, this is far more difficult, and may lead to blackouts or system collapse. Potential solutions include investigating new and efficient ways to store energy and encouraging consumers to use electricity at off-peak times.

    A second problem is the fact that many renewable power generation sources are located in remote areas, such as windy uplands and coastal regions, where there is currently a lack of electrical infrastructure. New infrastructures therefore must be built. Thankfully, with improved smart technology, this can be done more efficiently by reducing the reinforcement or construction costs.

    Although Smart Technology is still in its infancy, pilot schemes to promote and test it are already underway. Consumers are currently testing the new smart meters which can be used in their homes to manage electricity use. There are also a number of demonstrations being planned to show how the smart technology could practically work, and trials are in place to test the new electrical infrastructure. It is likely that technology will be added in 'layers', starting with 'quick win' methods which will provide initial carbon savings, to be followed by more advanced systems at a later date. Cities are prime candidates for investment into smart energy, due to the high population density and high energy use. It is here where Smart Technology is likely to be promoted first, utilising a range of sustainable power sources, transport solutions and an infrastructure for charging electrically powered vehicles. The infrastructure is already changing fast. By the year 2050, changes in the energy supply will have transformed our homes, our roads and our behaviour.

According to paragraph 1, what has happened in some oil producing countries?

Choose the best option A,B,C or D to complete the sentence

Excuse me, would you please tell me______?

Certainly. Go straight along here; it’s next to a hospital

Jenny’s engagement ring is enormous! It ______ have cost a fortune

Someone _________ me there’s been an accident on the motorway.

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When people learn to play video games, they are learning a new literacy. Of course, this is not the way the word "literacy" is normally used. Traditionally, people think of literacy as the ability to read and write. Why, then, should we think of literacy more broadly, in regard to video games or anything else, for that matter? There are two reasons.

First, in the modern world, language is not the only important communicational system. Today images, symbols, graphs, diagrams, artifacts, and many other visual symbols are particularly significant. Thus, the idea of different types of "visual literacy" would seem to be an important one. For example, being able to "read" the images in advertising is one type of visual literacy. And, of course, there are different ways to read such images, ways that are more or less aligned with the intentions and interests of the advertisers. Knowing how to read interior designs in homes, modernist art in museums, and videos on MTV are other forms of visual literacy.

Furthermore, very often today words and images of various sorts are juxtaposed and integrated in a variety of ways. In newspaper and magazines as well as in textbooks, images take up more and more of the space alongside words. In fact, in many modern high school and college textbooks in the sciences images not only take up more space, they now carry meanings that are independent of the words in the text. If you can't read these images, you will not be able to recover their meanings from the words in the text as was more usual in the past. In such multimodal texts (texts that mix words and images), the images often communicate different things from the words. And the combination of the two modes communicates things that neither of the modes does separately. Thus, the idea of different sorts of multimodal literacy seems an important one. Both modes and multimodality go far beyond images and words to include sounds, music, movement, bodily sensations, and smells.

None of this news today, of course. We very obviously live in a world awash with images. It is our first answer to the question why we should think of literacy more broadly. The second answer is this: Even though reading and writing seem so central to what literacy means traditionally, reading and writing are not such general and obvious matters as they might at first seem. After all, we never just read or write; rather, we always read or write something in some way.

So there are different ways to read different types of texts. Literacy is multiple, then, in the sense that the legal literacy needed for reading law books is not the same as the literacy needed for reading physics texts or superhero comic books. And we should not be too quick to dismiss the latter form of literacy. Many a superhero comic is replete with post-Freudian irony of a sort that would make a modern literary critic's heart beat fast and confuse any otherwise normal adult. Literacy, then, even as traditionally conceived to involve only print, is not a unitary thing but a multiple matter. There are, even in regard to printed texts and even leaving aside images and multimodal texts, different "literacies."

Once we see this multiplicity of literacy (literacies), we realize that when we think about reading and writing, we have to think beyond print. Reading and writing in any domain, whether it is law, rap songs, academic essays, superhero comics, or whatever, are not just ways of decoding print, they are also caught up with and in social practices... Video games are a new form of art. They will not replace books; they will sit beside them, interact with them, and change them and their role in society in various ways, as, indeed, they are already doing strongly with movies. (Today many movies are based on video games and many more are influenced by them.) We have no idea yet how people "read" video games, what meanings they make from them. Still less do we know how they will "read" them in the future.

All are mentioned as being types of "visual literacy" EXCEPT_________

According to this newspaper, John is said___________a new record for the long jump.

Woodrow Wilson_______ as a governor before was elected President of the United States in 1912.

Choose the best option A,B,C or D to complete the sentence

“ It’s kind of you to give me a ride to the station” - “________”

Linda: I’m going for an interview for a job this afternoon.

Jack: Good luck! I’ll keep my _____crossed for you

Life ________for female has risen over the last 10 years.

A grass-eating, river-dwelling mammal, the hippopotamus __________to the pig.

A computer is a _____typewriter which allows you to type and print any kind of documents

Peter ____come with us tonight, but he isn’t very sure