Demand side management in smart grid: A laboratory-based educational perspective

Abstract

Demand side management is an important operational aspect of smart grid focusing on cost and efficiency optimisation by load management and control. With growing power demand and shortage of energy resources, it is necessary to educate people on the benefits of demand side management. In the present Electrical Engineering curriculum, demand side management is also being taught as a core topic in power system courses. Hands-on laboratory sessional in demand side management will definitely assist the students in their understanding of the working principles and implementation challenges of demand side management. In this paper, a small-scale laboratory prototype demand side management system has been implemented and is being used in power system laboratory work for Electrical Engineering students at IIT Bhubaneswar (India). In this demand side management prototype system, a Central Energy Management Unit, interfaced with all load/energy control units at each customer end, is used for centralised load scheduling control. A data-entry circuit is used at each customer end for prior transmission of load scheduling request. For wireless data communication among various units, a Global System for Mobile communication is adopted. The laboratory setup consists of few loads, ARDUINO microcontrollers, relay modules, current sensors, MATLAB interface (at Central Energy Management Unit end) and Global System for Mobile communication modules. The learning performance/efficiency of the students has been evaluated by the students’ responses to a questionnaire before and after the experiment being conducted by them and it has been found to be noteworthy highlighting the educative efficacy of the well-designed experiment on demand side management.