Smart Grid Implementation Research Articles

Smart design rules for smart grids: analysing local smart grid development through an empirico-legal institutional lens

This article entails an innovative approach to smart grid technology implementation, as it connects governance research with legal analysis. We apply the empirico-legal ‘ILTIAD framework’, which combines Elinor Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework with institutional legal theory (ILT), to an empirical case study of a local smart grid project. Empirical data were collected in an exploratory, descriptive example study of a single case, focusing on the Action Situation and interactions towards establishing a local Smart Grid. The case was chosen because of its complexity, following the ‘logic of intensity sampling’. Data triangulation took place combining participatory observation, semi-structured interviews, and document analysis. Through an exploratory case study, we showed how the ILTIAD framework can help reduce complexity in local decision-making processes on smart grid implementation, as it allows for analytical description and prescriptive design of local smart grid systems. In the analysis we addressed ownership arrangements and contracts and identified barriers and opportunities for realizing a local smart grid system. The design part includes a scenario which revealed the prescribed patterns of behaviour (liberties and abilities) and the consequential aspects that apply to each situation. Analysing and designing normative alignment ex ante to the planning and implementation of a smart grid system provides clarity to stakeholders about their current opportunities. For this reason, the ILTIAD framework can be used as a design guideline for establishing new and integrated smart grid projects.

Smart grid implementation in India – A case study of Puducherry pilot project

The basis of the smart grid concept is the extension of information and communication technologies to the existing energy infrastructure. The improved communication between different parts of the energy system is expected to increase the quality, reliability and efficiency of the overall system in smart grid. This paper presents the implementation and analysis of load management by using the platform of Smart Grids for residential consumer setup, a pilot project of utility in Puducherry under open collaboration. The analysis is done with the data outcome of smart meters installed in the utility, which have features of two way communication, polling interval & data measurement, storage and display of consumption data to consumers, support for variable tariff and micro generation. The practical issues of concern faced in the implementation of Smart Grid in distribution system are also highlighted.Keywords: Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), Peak Load Management (PLM), Outage Management System (OMS) and Power Quality Management (PQM)

Provisioning required reliability of wireless data communication in smart grid neighborhood area networks

A possible candidate for implementing smart grid neighborhood area network (NAN) is wireless communications because of its advantages, such as flexibility and low installation and maintenance cost. However, one of the problems with wireless communication is its unreliability, whereas communication reliability is a basic requirement of smart grid applications. In this paper, we consider a wireless mesh network for NAN and then propose a method on the basis of hop-by-hop ARQ that achieves the required data communication reliability in wireless NAN and, at the same time, satisfies the communication latency constraint which is another requirement of smart grid applications. The proposed approach provides the optimal number of allowed retransmissions at each hop considering the loss probabilities of all hops and end-to-end delay constraint. Comparing to the typical application of ARQ in which the number of retransmissions permitted is the same at each hop, it is demonstrated that the proposed approach achieves a higher level of reliability while meeting the delay constraint. Moreover, the proposed method is evaluated by simulation, and the results are consistent with the results of the theoretical model.

Polycentrisme in lokale besluitvorming over duurzame energie: de casus slimme netten

Energy planning and the realization of a new energetic infrastructure has become an issue for many actors. The local setting has become polycentric. Against this background the authors have tried to answer the question of the possible consequences of a polycentric local decision-making arena for the realization of sustainable energy transition, especially the implementation of smart grids. Polycentrism is characterised by configurations of units that are multi-level, multi-purpose, multi-sectoral and multi-functional. The impact of these configurations can be assessed using four criteria: control, efficiency, political representation and local self-determination. The authors used these criteria to analyse two cases. Both cases show that the consequences of polycentrism are variable and differ on the four criteria. The analysis shows tensions in polycentric configurations between control and efficiency on the one hand and local self-determination and political representation on the other. This outcome was a reason for the authors to argue for a better institutional design for the local polycentric arena with the help of the seven ‘rules-in-use’ of Elinor Ostrom. Her design is universal but requires specific local application. In this way more justice can be done to the local circumstances in order to be able to achieve effective results.

Classification for consumption data in smart grid based on forecasting time series

One of the most important tasks of present day smart grid implementations is to classify different types of consumers (households, office buildings and industrial plants) because they may be served by the power supplier with different parameters, rates, contracts.In this paper, we propose a novel classification scheme for smart grid systems where the collected data are processed in order to increase the efficiency of electricity transportation as well as demand-supply management. The new scheme is based on forecasting the consumption time series obtained from a smart meter. Class assignment is determined using the forecast error. Different linear and nonlinear methods were tested based on the corresponding assumptions on the statistical behavior of the underlying consumption time series.Performance tests were carried out with simulations in order to demonstrate the capabilities and to compare the achieved performance of the proposed scheme with existing solutions. The simulations have been executed using (i) artificially generated consumption data, which data came from a bottom-up semi-Markov model and (ii) real, measured power consumption data as well. The parameters of the model have been validated on real data. The numerical results have demonstrated that our method can better model and classify the consumption patterns of office-buildings than the existing methods. As a result, the proposed method may prove to be a promising classification tool.

Smart Grids and their Applicability for the Development of the Electricity Sector for Colombia in the year 2050

Smart Grids are a technology that can be used to implement a sustainable energy scheme of a country. Therefore, this paper proposes the development of a prospective analysis of Smart Grids as a tool to ensure energetic security in Colombia in 2050. Using LEAP software, a base scenario for Colombian energy demand has developed according to current policies, with a time horizon from 2012 to 2050. The energy analysis is based on three scenarios, taking into account the impact of cogeneration in the residential and industrial sector using renewable energy and the power quality indicators. The results show that the implementation of Smart Grids generate energy savings and increasing the coverage of the national electricity system, ensuring energetic security of the country by 2050.

Improving the AODV Protocol to Satisfy the Required Level of Reliability for Home Area Networks

For decades, the structure of existing power grids has not changed. It is an old structure that depends heavily on fossil fuel as an energy source, and in the future, this is likely to be critical in the field of energy. To solve these problems and to make optimal use of energy resources, a new concept is proposed, called Smart Grid. Smart Grid is an electric power distribution automation system, which can provide a two-way flow of electricity and information between power plants and consumers. The Smart Grid communications infrastructure consists of different network components, such as Home Area Network (HAN), Neighborhood Area Network (NAN) and Wide Area Network (WAN). Achieving the required level of reliability in the transmission of information to all sections, including the HAN, is one of the main objectives in the design and implementation of Smart Grid. This study offers a routing protocol by considering the parameters and constraints of HAN, which, by improving AODV routing protocol, achieves the level of required reliability for data transmission in this network. These improvements include: making table-driven AODV routing protocol, extending the routing protocol to compute multiple paths in a route discovery, simplification and providing the effect of HAN parameters. The results of the NS2 simulation indicate that applying this improved routing protocol in the HAN, satisfies the required level of reliability of the network, which is over 98%.

Area Limitations on Smart Grid Computer Networks

Smart grid implementations rely on the real-time monitoring and controlling of the electric power grid. To achieve real time there is need for a messaging system with minimum delays. After mentioning latest implementations and their delays we analyze the role of the different communication protocols needed within smart grids and we describe key factors to a message’s delay. Taking into consideration a packet’s speed constraints we then calculate a radius, within which, the ETSI communication requirements for smart grids are satisfied.

Smart Grid Performance Assessment Via Multicriteria Decision Aid Constructive Approach Method

Since their conception, electric systems have not been through large modifications regarding their topology, solutions and metrics. However, the use of sensors, communications, computational capacity and control to increase and improve the power system functionalities, concept known as Smart Grid (SG), has great potential to revolutionize the electric sector. Nonetheless, many difficulties emerge when implementing SG technologies in a large scale. These difficulties may be technical, financial, environmental, regulatory and managerial. In order to aid in this process, the goal of this research is to propose a novel approach on how to assess the performance of SG implementation projects. The approach is based on the multicriteria decision aid theory, specifically using the Multicriteria Decision Aid Constructive Approach (MCDA-C), due to its' logical and data treatment structures. A case study to evaluate the MCDA-C application was conducted, in partnership with a local utility SG pilot-project. With the use of this novel approach, it was possible to build a quantitative roadmap to monitor and improve the project performance. The main contribution of this work is the novel approach proposed, an adaptive model based on a multicriteria decision aid method that can comprehensively assess the performance of any SG project.

Roadmap of Smart Grid for Bangladesh Based on Functions and Technological Challenges

To ensure dependable and sustainable supply of electricity, a modern power grid is necessary which will be smarter. On this ground, United States and some developed countries in Europe, Asia, and Australia have carried out some significant activities to formulate and promote a pathway for the evolution of the next generation intelligent grid. Implementation of Smart Grid can be a better tool to develop greener digital Bangladesh. This new technology ensures effective control of electric supply and demand using information technology, and assures the potential use of eco-friendly power generation. The objective of this paper is to present a roadmap that could be used as guidance for the development of smart grid architecture based on functions and technological challenges for this south Asian nation. This paper contains a discussion on the functions of smart grid from perspective of the country. The key technological challenges to implement this new intelligent grid have been outlined and their potential remedies are proposed. The paper also illustrates the ongoing initiative taken up by Bangladesh government towards smarter grid. The most challenging part is to run this new technology in a profitable manner and to ensure this, some pilot projects are needed to be demonstrated.

Energy Efficiency in Cognitive Radio Network: Green Technology Towards Next Generation Networks

Energy efficiency of mobile network is always a challenging task. From the past decade, it is observable that the users who are using multimedia services are increasing in rapid way. These multimedia applications require higher data rates. High data rates will consume more energy of mobile network, which results poor energy efficiency. To meet higher data rates and to achieve energy efficiency, Cognitive Mobile Network with small cell model was explained in this paper. Dynamics of the power grid also have significant impact on mobile networks, hence smart grid implementation was proposed instead of traditional power grid. Most of the existed studies on cognitive mobile network focussed on spectrum sensing only. This paper focussed on cognitive radio network implementation by considering spectrum sensing and smart grid environment. An iterative algorithm was proposed to attain equillibrium condition to the problem. Interference management and energy efficient power allocation were achieved with the introduction of smart grid. Simulation results proved that optimum power allocation and energy efficiency are possible with the introduction of smart grid in cognitive network.

Smart Grid Redefined

The Smart Grid is the biggest thing to hit the electric utility industry over the last 40 years. Was the grid dumb before and is now on its way to becoming smarter? Yes, and no. If you ask four people “what is a Smart Grid?” – You will get five answers. Defining it is very important and this study attempts to do just that. The study starts by defining what the Smart Grid can and should deliver and uses it to define the Smart Grid. The author also presents a construct identifying various components of Smart Grid followed by their descriptions. Understanding these components is important because as technology progresses, one or more of them may replace. The paper ends with a description of two prominent Smart Grid implementations, one in US and one in Europe followed by what the future holds for this area and the challenges that it may pose. The Smart Grid is not just a technology play but a journey that must be followed with changes in people, processes driving business transformation [1]. If these are considered in totality, then the implementation will be successful. If not, the benefits will be lower than expected.

Real-Time Benefit Analysis and Industrial Implementation for Distribution System Automation and Control

Smart grid technologies are expected to increase system efficiency and reliability using advancement in automation, communication, computation, and optimization. Several control algorithms have been developed or enhanced for operation and control of smart distribution grid. In recent years, volt/var control (VVC) algorithms have been proposed for energy saving in distribution systems due to advancement provided by smart grid automation and control. VVC helps to lower distribution feeder voltage to decrease energy consumption. However, quantification of this impact is hard due to several external factors such as weather and end users' behavior. On the other hand, existing evaluation methods of VVC algorithms are either not suitable for long-term study or intrusive. This paper addresses these issues by proposing a new technique to estimate “distribution system demand without smart grid implementation” utilizing “data measured from system with smart grid implementation.” Interdependence of voltage and load is considered based on estimated load characteristic. Our key contribution is developing a method for quantifying the real-time energy saving of smart grid automation and control focused on VVC and implementing in an electric utility in eastern Washington, USA. The algorithm is developed using both commercial and open-source software.

Industrial Policy in Germany after the Global Financial And Economic Crisis

The paper gives a review of recent key German industrial policy developments after the global economic crisis. In particular it discusses the German energy policy which has redirected its activities towards renewable energy and the decision to end nuclear energy completely in the next years. Furthermore to make major progress in the decarbonization process by closing domestic coal mines and most of the electric power stations based on coal as an energy source will follow suit. From the technological site this gives the development of new green energy technologies in Germany a major demand pull. In particular beside wind and solar energy generation new storage and distribution technology will be needed including the development and implementation of smart grids. Contrary to other major industrialized countries German manufacturing industries have been successful to maintain their global market share even after Chinese manufacturing industries rose significantly over the past decade. In particular in the area of machinery and automotive industries Germany could expand or at least maintain overall their global position. However, in the automotive industry the strategy of electromobility to develop and sell electric cars in large numbers so that 1 mill. cars will be registered on the roads in Germany by 2020 has been lagging significantly behind the initial targets. This is not a particular German problem. At the global scale electromobility still is at its infancy. Two key factors hampering its market success. From the technological side the distance traveled with one battery charge is too low to compete with those cars using fossil fuels. Additionally the recharging of a battery is too slow. Both obstacles need an improvement of about a factor ten to become nearly equal to the traditional cars. From the economic side the costs are still to high to offer potential buyers an incentive to switch to electric cars. Subsidies might be a potential remedy, but will only be useful if the technological obstacles are overcome as well. Otherwise customers will still have to judge if they would accept the technological shortcoming of the current generation of electric vehicles. The push to self-driving cars is another key driver in the automotive industry. It will have major implications on the future structure of the global automotive industry. Currently German car manufacturers are well positioned, but have to be careful that disruptive innovators like Google, Apple or Tesla will not challenge the traditional car manufacturers globally. Another area where German industrial policy has become very active is the area of the digital economy which should be addressed with the digial agenda launched by the German government in close cooperation with the EU-commission. However, this is still in its infancy and Germany will face stiff competition from other major global key players like the US, Japan, South Korea and China. Strategic alliances between different countries and players are emerging. Last but not least the German government with the German manufacturing industry started a new initiative under the label of Industry 4.0. The aim is to significantly push foreward the integration of manufacturing goods and services utilizing the internet as the platform of the internet of things. The technologies which have to integrated are big data applications in global communication networks including data collection collected by embedded sensor systems, additive manufacturing technologies, and robotics based on AI embodied in self-learning and mobile autonomous robots with a much broader area of application in the society as before. Again the problem of cost savings for such systems will be essential for a successful diffusion. Last but not least training and retraining of the workforce will be important to make good use of the new technological innovations. Here Germany still needs to make more efforts to keep their current and future labor force up-to-date. All in all the past and current success of the German manufacturing industry in particular after the global economic and financial crisis gives some reason to look optimistic into the future, however, there is no reason for complacency since the global competition of the future high-tech markets will be intense and might even intensify with China as a major new player.

Sensor Network Infrastructure for AMI in Smart Grid

Utility companies incur financial loss due to transmission losses as well as non technical losses like power theft and billing irregularities. Smart meters with the required functionalities along with an intelligent grid form an Automated Meter Reading (AMR) infrastructure which can improve the distribution efficiency. AMR infrastructure can be expanded by allowing for bi-directional communication between the grid components to form an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). This helps for the smooth interaction between grid components to load and off-load the distributed energy sources while supporting an efficient Demand Side Management of power. Communication technologies play a vital role in the implementation of smart grid and Wireless Sensor Networks are gaining attraction in this field. Routing protocols with high reliability, low latency and that can co-exist with the established protocols are the need of the hour. Routing Protocol for Low Power Lossy Networks (RPL) fit into this space well. An attempt to build an automated infrastructure using RPL for collecting the metering information, which at a later stage can be easily upgraded to an AMI setup by simply adding the supporting end devices for a much more intelligent smart grid, is carried out in this paper

Securing the smart grid: threats and remediation

The implementation of the smart grid brings many improvements over the traditional energy grid by leveraging a vast interconnected infrastructure that allows two way communication and automation throughout the entire grid. A key difference over the existing grid is the introduction of the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) which contains many new components such as the smart meter and the communication gateways. The focus of this paper is to examine the possible effects on the energy supply should these devices become compromised. Smart meters are one of the most important components in the smart grid implementation which allow a real time flow of information to/from the consumer on their energy usage. The paper also discusses how closing coal and oil power plant has increased our demand on gas power stations in the UK. Our experiments show that manipulating smart meter readings can create a massive shortfall in gas provisioning.

A method to identify VR-based set-up to foster elderly in design evaluation

User involvement during design process is an important issue in inclusive design (ID). To this purpose, in the last years, virtual reality (VR) technologies have been introduced to construct virtual prototypes, in order to allow test with users even at the end of the conceptual design phase. The present paper aims to propose a method to support the selection of VR interaction technologies, which can be suited by end users accordingly to their physical and cognitive abilities. The proposed method is applied in order to compare the main VR interaction technologies with the objective to identify an optimal low-cost VR set-up to involve elderly people in evaluation of an innovative concept of kitchen environment which implement smart grid and home automation technologies.

The Implementation of Smart Grid to the Simulating Toolkit Modes

This paper discusses the implementation of the renewable energy sources and the energy storage system to the smart grid by means of simulating toolkit of Modes. The output curve of photovoltaic and wind power plant is also the part of this paper. This paper analyses the difference between residential and commercial load. The test system was made in Modes for modelling all possibilities. The possibility of connection energy storage is analysed. The storage system is used for charming the load peaks during the day to compare smart grids with energy storage and without it.

A Correlated Equilibrium Game-Theoretic Approach for Multiple Participants Electric Distribution Systems Operation

The implementation of smart grid permits different system participants (e.g., distributed generations and loads) to interact in a rational and independent behavior to improve the distribution system (DS) performance. Each participant is recognized as a selfish decision maker that selects actions that improve its own payoff leading to conflicts with others. Therefore, further investigations are required to improve the decision making process outcomes. In this paper, a decentralized cooperative algorithm is developed to manage the multiparticipants DS operation. The proposed algorithm has been developed based on a correlated equilibrium game-theoretic approach. The outcomes of the proposed algorithm were compared with the traditional existing “best response” (BR) game-theoretic approach, which was utilized in similar multiparticipants DSs that converge to Nash equilibrium. The proposed algorithm is tested with two different case studies that were selected by the DS operator. The proposed algorithm was verified using a modified IEEE 123-bus test feeder. The test results showed a superior system performance compared with traditional BR techniques.

Multi‐agent‐based dynamic state estimator for multi‐area power system

The smart grid implementation requires real time monitoring and visualisation of the power system networks. This study presents a multi-agent-based multi-area power system dynamic state estimator (MPDSE), suitable for the network that can be divided into sub-areas. In this approach, the sub-areas run MPDSE using field measurements from the remote terminal units (RTUs), as well as from the phasor measurement units (PMUs). The MPDSE is executed for the sub-areas independently and in parallel to save the overall execution time. Software agents are utilised to exchange the information and run the MPDSE for the RTU and the PMU measurements separately, and, then, integrate their results to estimate the final states of a sub-area. The central coordinator consolidates the state estimates of all the sub-areas. The MPDSE is solved by using three approaches based on extended Kalman filter (), unscented Kalman filter, and cubature Kalman filter, and their relative performances are obtained with the help of the simulation results on two test systems.