Monitoring and managing of a micro-smart grid for renewable sources exploitation in an agro-industrial site

Abstract

The development of smart grids is a strategic goal at both national and international levels and has been funded by many research programs. At the same time, an increasing interest is rising about local energy systems using renewable energy sources (RES). In this paper, the creation of a monitoring and managing procedure of an electricity micro-smart grid in a small agro-food enterprise is presented. Scopes of the procedure are both the minimization of the energy exchange between the local grid and the public utility grid and the optimization of the exploitation of renewable sources. To achieve that, it was necessary to match energy demand and supply in as short as possible time steps, trying to create a self-sufficient small district. The two objectives above can also generate financial savings due to the reduction of the electricity purchase from the grid. The agro-industrial test site is a prosumer (both a producer and a consumer of energy) and it was equipped with wireless networks of smart meters and devices, monitoring generators and loads, a data acquisition tool and a user interface that shows the monitoring results and suggests the optimization strategies of the smart grid to be undertaken.