The paper reviews different approaches, technologies, and strategies to manage large-scale schemes of variable renewable electricity such as solar and wind power. We consider both supply and demand side measures. In addition to presenting energy system flexibility measures, their importance to renewable electricity is discussed. The flexibility measures available range from traditional ones such as grid extension or pumped hydro storage to more advanced strategies such as demand side management and demand side linked approaches, e.g. the use of electric vehicles for storing excess electricity, but also providing grid support services. Advanced batteries may offer new solutions in the future, though the high costs associated with batteries may restrict their use to smaller scale applications. Different “P2Y”-type of strategies, where P stands for surplus renewable power and Y for the energy form or energy service to which this excess in converted to, e.g. thermal energy, hydrogen, gas or mobility are receiving much attention as potential flexibility solutions, making use of the energy system as a whole. To “functionalize” or to assess the value of the various energy system flexibility measures, these need often be put into an electricity/energy market or utility service context. Summarizing, the outlook for managing large amounts of RE power in terms of options available seems to be promising.

https://research.aalto.fi/files/6557604/lund_et_al_review.pdf

Review of energy system flexibility measures to enable high levels of variable renewable electricity

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a promising technology which tends to revolutionize and connect the global world via heterogeneous smart devices through seamless connectivity. The current demand for machine-type communications (MTC) has resulted in a variety of communication technologies with diverse service requirements to achieve the modern IoT vision. More recent cellular standards like long-term evolution (LTE) have been introduced for mobile devices but are not well suited for low-power and low data rate devices such as the IoT devices. To address this, there is a number of emerging IoT standards. Fifth generation (5G) mobile network, in particular, aims to address the limitations of previous cellular standards and be a potential key enabler for future IoT. In this paper, the state-of-the-art of the IoT application requirements along with their associated communication technologies are surveyed. In addition, the third generation partnership project cellular-based low-power wide area solutions to support and enable the new service requirements for Massive to Critical IoT use cases are discussed in detail, including extended coverage global system for mobile communications for the Internet of Things, enhanced machine-type communications, and narrowband-Internet of Things. Furthermore, 5G new radio enhancements for new service requirements and enabling technologies for the IoT are introduced. This paper presents a comprehensive review related to emerging and enabling technologies with main focus on 5G mobile networks that is envisaged to support the exponential traffic growth for enabling the IoT. The challenges and open research directions pertinent to the deployment of massive to critical IoT applications are also presented in coming up with an efficient context-aware congestion control mechanism.

A Survey on 5G Networks for the Internet of Things: Communication Technologies and Challenges

Fog Computing is a paradigm that extends Cloud computing and services to the edge of the network Similar to Cloud, Fog provides data, compute, storage, and application services to end-users In this article, we elaborate the motivation and advantages of Fog computing, and analyse its applications in a series of real scenarios, such as Smart Grid, smart traffic lights in vehicular networks and software defined networks We discuss the state-of-the-art of Fog computing and similar work under the same umbrella Security and privacy issues are further disclosed according to current Fog computing paradigm As an example, we study a typical attack, man-in-the-middle attack, for the discussion of security in Fog computing We investigate the stealthy features of this attack by examining its CPU and memory consumption on Fog device

https://annals-csis.org/Volume_2/pliks/503.pdf

The Fog computing paradigm: Scenarios and security issues

As the explosive growth of smart devices and the advent of many new applications, traffic volume has been growing exponentially. The traditional centralized network architecture cannot accommodate such user demands due to heavy burden on the backhaul links and long latency. Therefore, new architectures, which bring network functions and contents to the network edge, are proposed, i.e., mobile edge computing and caching. Mobile edge networks provide cloud computing and caching capabilities at the edge of cellular networks. In this survey, we make an exhaustive review on the state-of-the-art research efforts on mobile edge networks. We first give an overview of mobile edge networks, including definition, architecture, and advantages. Next, a comprehensive survey of issues on computing, caching, and communication techniques at the network edge is presented. The applications and use cases of mobile edge networks are discussed. Subsequently, the key enablers of mobile edge networks, such as cloud technology, SDN/NFV, and smart devices are discussed. Finally, open research challenges and future directions are presented as well.

A Survey on Mobile Edge Networks: Convergence of Computing, Caching and Communications

The concept of smart grid has emerged as a convergence of traditional power system engineering and information and communication technology. It is vital to the success of next generation of power grid, which is expected to be featuring reliable, efficient, flexible, clean, friendly, and secure characteristics. In this paper, we propose an efficient and privacy-preserving aggregation scheme, named EPPA, for smart grid communications. EPPA uses a superincreasing sequence to structure multidimensional data and encrypt the structured data by the homomorphic Paillier cryptosystem technique. For data communications from user to smart grid operation center, data aggregation is performed directly on ciphertext at local gateways without decryption, and the aggregation result of the original data can be obtained at the operation center. EPPA also adopts the batch verification technique to reduce authentication cost. Through extensive analysis, we demonstrate that EPPA resists various security threats and preserve user privacy, and has significantly less computation and communication overhead than existing competing approaches.

/pdf/eppa-an-efficient-and-privacy-preserving-aggregation-scheme-1pkv13ug7a.pdf

EPPA: An Efficient and Privacy-Preserving Aggregation Scheme for Secure Smart Grid Communications

The advanced metering infrastructure of the smart grid presents the biggest growth potential in the machine-to-machine market today. Spurred by recent advances in M2M technologies, SG smart meters are expected not to require human intervention in characterizing power requirements and energy distribution. However, there are many challenges in the design of the SG communications network whereby the electrical appliances and smart meters are able to exchange information pertaining to varying power requirements. Furthermore, different types of M2M gateways are required at different points (e.g., at home, in the building, at the neighborhood, and so forth) of the SG communication network. This article surveys a number of existing communication technologies that can be adopted for M2M communication in SG. Among these, the most reliable technology to facilitate M2M communication in the SG home area network is pointed out, and its shortcoming is also noted. Furthermore, a possible solution to deal with this shortcoming to improve SG communications scalability is also presented.

N Iwasaki

Papers

Toward intelligent machine-to-machine communications in smart grid