Smart grid

About: Smart grid is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 37536 publications have been published within this topic receiving 627844 citations. The topic is also known as: intelligent grid.

Smart Charging Strategy for Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

Abstract: Although the concept of transportation electrification holds enormous prospects in addressing the global environmental pollution problem, in reality the market penetration of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) has been very low. Consumer concerns over the limited availability of charging facilities and unacceptably long charging periods are major factors behind this low penetration rate. From the perspective of the electricity grid, a longer PEV peak load period can potentially overlap with the residential peak load period, making energy management more challenging. A suitably designed charging strategy can help to address these concerns, which motivated us to conduct this research. In this paper, we present a smart charging strategy for a PEV network that offers multiple charging options, including ac level 2 charging, dc fast charging, and battery swapping facilities at charging stations. For a PEV requiring charging facilities, we model the issue of finding the optimal charging station as a multiobjective optimization problem, where the goal is to find a station that ensures the minimum charging time, travel time, and charging cost. We extend the model to a metaheuristic solution in the form of an ant colony optimization. Simulation results show that the proposed solution significantly reduces waiting time and charging cost.

Supply-Adequacy-Based Optimal Construction of Microgrids in Smart Distribution Systems

Abstract: Recently, the concept of microgrids (clusters of distributed generation, energy storage units, and reactive power sources serving a cluster of distributed loads in grid-connected and isolated grid modes) has gained a lot of interest under the smart grid vision. However, there is a strong need to develop systematic procedure for optimal construction of microgrids. This paper presents systematic and optimized approaches for clustering of the distribution system into a set of virtual microgrids with optimized self-adequacy. The probabilistic characteristics of distributed generation (DG) units are also considered by defining two new probabilistic indices representing real and reactive power of the lines. Next, the advantages of installing both distributed energy storage resources (DESRs) and distributed reactive sources (DRSs) are investigated to improve the self-adequacy of the constructed micro-grids. The new strategy facilitates robust infrastructure for smart distribution systems operational control functions, such as self-healing, by using virtual microgrids as building blocks in future distribution systems. The problem formulation and solution algorithms are presented in this paper. The well-known PG&E 69-bus distribution system is selected as a test case and through several sensitivity studies, the effect of the total DESRs or DRSs capacities on the design and the robustness of the algorithm are investigated.

Optimal Power Management of Residential Customers in the Smart Grid

Abstract: Recently intensive efforts have been made on the transformation of the world's largest physical system, the power grid, into a “smart grid” by incorporating extensive information and communication infrastructures. Key features in such a “smart grid” include high penetration of renewable and distributed energy sources, large-scale energy storage, market-based online electricity pricing, and widespread demand response programs. From the perspective of residential customers, we can investigate how to minimize the expected electricity cost with real-time electricity pricing, which is the focus of this paper. By jointly considering energy storage, local distributed generation such as photovoltaic (PV) modules or small wind turbines, and inelastic or elastic energy demands, we mathematically formulate this problem as a stochastic optimization problem and approximately solve it by using the Lyapunov optimization approach. From the theoretical analysis, we have also found a good tradeoff between cost saving and storage capacity. A salient feature of our proposed approach is that it can operate without any future knowledge on the related stochastic models (e.g., the distribution) and is easy to implement in real time. We have also evaluated our proposed solution with practical data sets and validated its effectiveness.

Heterogeneous communication architecture for the smart grid

Abstract: The smart grid concept provides a solution to the growing recognition that current utility grids need an ICT deployment infrastructure based upgrade to allow millions of potential market players to operate and to cope with distributed generation, wide-area situational awareness, demand response, electric storage, and efficient electric transportation. Smart grid deployment is mainly about defining the necessary standards for ICT solutions. The design of the communication network associated with the smart grid involves detailed analysis of its communication requirements, a proposal of the appropriate protocol architecture, the choice of the most suitable technologies for each case study, and a scheme for the resultant heterogeneous network management system. Given the smart grid use cases, this article is focused on proposing a heterogeneous communication paradigm for smart grids based on power line communications and wireless networks. The proposal is related to the framework of the ITU ubiquitous sensor network architecture using the ITU next-generation network model. This architecture allows for better management of the QoS in the smart grid and should facilitate interoperability with other technologies.