Information and communication technologies (ICT) represent a fundamental element in the growth and performance of smart grids. A sophisticated, reliable and fast communication infrastructure is, in fact, necessary for the connection among the huge amount of distributed elements, such as generators, substations, energy storage systems and users, enabling a real time exchange of data and information necessary for the management of the system and for ensuring improvements in terms of efficiency, reliability, flexibility and investment return for all those involved in a smart grid: producers, operators and customers. This paper overviews the issues related to the smart grid architecture from the perspective of potential applications and the communications requirements needed for ensuring performance, flexible operation, reliability and economics.

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A Survey on Smart Grid Potential Applications and Communication Requirements

This paper proposes a secondary voltage control of microgrids based on the distributed cooperative control of multi-agent systems. The proposed secondary control is fully distributed; each distributed generator only requires its own information and the information of some neighbors. The distributed structure obviates the requirements for a central controller and complex communication network which, in turn, improves the system reliability. Input-output feedback linearization is used to convert the secondary voltage control to a linear second-order tracker synchronization problem. The control parameters can be tuned to obtain a desired response speed. The effectiveness of the proposed control methodology is verified by the simulation of a microgrid test system.

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Distributed Cooperative Secondary Control of Microgrids Using Feedback Linearization

Economics and environmental incentives, as well as advances in technology, are reshaping the traditional view of industrial systems. The anticipation of a large penetration of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) into the market brings up many technical problems that are highly related to industrial information technologies within the next ten years. There is a need for an in-depth understanding of the electrification of transportation in the industrial environment. It is important to consolidate the practical and the conceptual knowledge of industrial informatics in order to support the emerging electric vehicle (EV) technologies. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the electrification of transportation in an industrial environment. In addition, it provides a comprehensive survey of the EVs in the field of industrial informatics systems, namely: 1) charging infrastructure and PHEV/PEV batteries; 2) intelligent energy management; 3) vehicle-to-grid; and 4) communication requirements. Moreover, this paper presents a future perspective of industrial information technologies to accelerate the market introduction and penetration of advanced electric drive vehicles.

A Survey on the Electrification of Transportation in a Smart Grid Environment

Application of empirical mode decomposition and artificial neural network for automatic bearing fault diagnosis based on vibration signals

With the arrival of smart grid era and the advent of advanced communication and information infrastructures, bidirectional communication, advanced metering infrastructure, energy storage systems and home area networks would revolutionize the patterns of electricity usage and energy conservation at the consumption premises. Coupled with the emergence of vehicle-to-grid technologies and massive distributed renewable energy, there is a profound transition for the energy management pattern from the conventional centralized infrastructure towards the autonomous responsive demand and cyber-physical energy systems with renewable and stored energy sources. Under the sustainable smart grid paradigm, the smart house with its home energy management system (HEMS) plays an important role to improve the efficiency, economics, reliability, and energy conservation for distribution systems. In this paper, a brief overview on the architecture and functional modules of smart HEMS is presented. Then, the advanced HEMS infrastructures and home appliances in smart houses are thoroughly analyzed and reviewed. Furthermore, the utilization of various building renewable energy resources in HEMS, including solar, wind, biomass and geothermal energies, is surveyed. Lastly, various home appliance scheduling strategies to reduce the residential electricity cost and improve the energy efficiency from power generation utilities are also investigated.

Smart home energy management systems: Concept, configurations, and scheduling strategies

The recent worldwide measures for energy savings call for a larger awareness of the household energy consumption, given the relevant contribution of domestic load to the national energy balance. On the other hand, electricity smart meters together with gas, heat, and water meters can be interconnected in a large network offering a potential value to implement energy savings and other energy-related services, as long as an efficient interface with the final user is implemented. Unfortunately, so far, the interface of such devices is mostly designed and addressed at the utilities supervising the system, giving them relevant advantages, while the communication with the household is often underestimated. This paper addresses this topic by proposing the definition of a local interface for smart meters, by looking at the actual European Union and international regulations, at the technological solutions available on the market, and at those implemented in different countries, and, finally, by proposing specific architectures for a proper consumer-oriented implementation of a smart meter network.

Electricity Smart Meters Interfacing the Households

This paper proposes a new approach to use stator current and efficiency of induction motors as indicators of rolling-bearing faults. After a presentation of the state of the art about condition monitoring of vibration and motor current for the diagnostics of bearings, this paper illustrates the experimental results on four different types of bearing defects: crack in the outer race, hole in the outer race, deformation of the seal, and corrosion. The first and third faults have not been previously considered in the literature, with the latter being analyzed in other research works, even if obtained in a different way. Another novelty introduced by this paper is the analysis of the decrease in efficiency of the motor with a double purpose: as alarm of incipient faults and as evaluation of the extent of energy waste resulting from the lasting of the fault condition before the breakdown of the machine.

Stator Current and Motor Efficiency as Indicators for Different Types of Bearing Faults in Induction Motors

This paper deals with the formulation of a supervisory sliding mode (SM) control approach oriented to deal with the interesting class of system of systems of robotic nature. This class of systems is characterized by the fact of being inherently distributed, cooperative, and, possibly, heterogeneous. In this paper, we propose a modular and composable approach relying on basic modules featuring a multilevel functional architecture, including a supervisor and a couple of hybrid position/force control schemes associated with a couple of cooperative robotic manipulators. In principle, the overall robotic system we are referring to can be viewed as a collection of basic modules of that type. In this paper, we focus on the design of the basic module. The hybrid position/force control schemes therein included are based on position and force controllers. The proposed position and force controllers are of SM type, to assure suitable robustness to perform a satisfactory trajectory tracking even in presence of unavoidable modeling uncertainties and external disturbances. The verification and the validation of our proposal have been performed by simulating the supervisor and the hybrid control scheme applied to one of the two robotic manipulators while experimentally testing the position control on the other arm. The experimental part of the tests has been carried out on a COMAU SMART3-S2 anthropomorphic industrial robotic manipulator.

A Supervisory Sliding Mode Control Approach for Cooperative Robotic System of Systems

The paper presents a review of the main communication protocols relating to industrial applications of electrical drives. In the factory automation context, drives are increasingly considered as intelligent actuators which require to exchange amount of data both mutually and with a supervising unit in order to improve the process quality. The protocols here considered are relevant either because of their diffusion in specific market areas (Profibus, FIP), or due to their specific design tailored to the drives (CAN bus, SERCOS). After a classification of the different networks, according to serial point-to-point or multipoint connection, the single protocols are reviewed in detail, by considering the most significant features from the point of view of the drive producer and user and showing how they can affect the control performances of the drives. In conclusion a comprehensive comparison table is reported for quick reference.

Communication protocols for electrical drives

In full electric (EV) or hybrid electric (HEV) vehicles the onboard communication is a crucial issue, that can take advantage from a reliable and robust interaction among the embedded units (ECUs) providing among others the power and batteries management, services, accessories and supervision; an updated global view of the system under control (the car) can improve the quality of control, reliability, safety and comfort. Power Line Communication technology (PLC), that take advantage of the DC power line as a physical medium to exchange messages, according to standard protocols, is a candidate at substituting the actual wired solutions, by substantially reducing the cabling burden. The present paper aims at i) reviewing PLC technology for DC bus in the automotive sector; ii) defining the requirements of a reliable communication systems within a car environment, with special attention given to the data exchange needed by the more critical systems in EV and HEV, and namely the control of electrical actuators for traction; iii) describing a benchmark for testing the data transfer characteristics and performance, including details on proposed protocols and architectures and presenting experimental results on data channel characterization and transmission.

Ezio Bassi

Papers

Electricity Smart Meters Interfacing the Households

Stator Current and Motor Efficiency as Indicators for Different Types of Bearing Faults in Induction Motors

A Supervisory Sliding Mode Control Approach for Cooperative Robotic System of Systems

Communication protocols for electrical drives

Powerline communication in electric vehicles