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A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Science and Technology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 October 2020) | Viewed by 24781

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Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Giacomo Verticale

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Guest Editor

Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, 20133 Milano, Italy
Interests: Internet of Things; 5G; machine-to-machine communications; demand response; smart metering; load shifting; energy awareness; real-time services; distribution system operator (DSO); in-home device (IHD)

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The electric power grid is evolving into a distributed, user-centric smart grid capable of providing economically efficient, sustainable power with high reliability, security, and safety.

Realizing the vision of the smart grid requires reliable and effective information and communication technologies that enable high-speed, low-latency communications. Indeed, communication technologies are a key enabler for many of the foreseen smart grid features, such as demand response, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), electric vehicle and storage unity integration, and microgrid control. Several solutions for smart grid communications have recently emerged that rely on new generation wireless communication and power line communication technologies. This includes novel approaches to enable smart meters and other machine-type devices to communicate with the grid, as well as new communication solutions to enable vehicle-to-grid and grid-to-vehicle communications. The integration of information and communication technologies in the grid also poses security risks that must be mitigated from a cyber-physical perspective.

Prof. Dr. Giacomo Verticale
Guest Editor

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Keywords

Communications architectures
Smart metering
Energy management
Critical infrastructures
Distributed energy sources
Security
Privacy
Demand response

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

24 pages, 1026 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Simulation-Based Evaluation of the Performance of Broadband over Power Lines with Multiple Repeaters in Linear Topology of Distribution Substations

by Petr Musil, Petr Mlynek, Jan Slacik and Jiri Pokorny

Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(19), 6879; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10196879 - 1 Oct 2020

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2622

Abstract

Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) is considered a promising communication technology in the concept of Smart Grids. This paper evaluates networks based on BPL, with a focus on the impact of repeaters in the linear topology of distribution substations. In large-scale Smart Grids network planning, positions of repeaters have to be carefully chosen. This article should help to determine such positions and limitations of BPL linear topology networks. Laboratory and on-field measurements and their results are presented in this article. Results show the impact of repeater’s deployment for different testing methodologies also with regard to other already presented studies. Measured values and the determined impacts of repeaters are later used as input data for simulation of the linear BPL topology in terms of network throughput with multiple streams and bottlenecks. These occur especially on lines shared by multiple communicating nodes. Furthermore, the simulation investigates the balancing time of multiple data streams throughput. The simulation shows that the throughput balancing can occupy a significant time slot, up to tens of seconds before the throughput of different streams balances. Also, the more data is generated, the more time the balancing time takes. Additionally, the throughput drop caused by a repeater is determined into the range of 35–60%. Based on the measurement and simulation results, lessons learned are presented, and possible performance improvements are discussed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Communication System in Smart Grids)

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17 pages, 854 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Solar Thermal Collector Output Temperature Prediction by Hybrid Intelligent Model for Smartgrid and Smartbuildings Applications and Optimization

by José-Luis Casteleiro-Roca, Pablo Chamoso, Esteban Jove, Alfonso González-Briones, Héctor Quintián, María-Isabel Fernández-Ibáñez, Rafael Alejandro Vega Vega, Andrés-José Piñón Pazos, José Antonio López Vázquez, Santiago Torres-Álvarez, Tiago Pinto and Jose Luis Calvo-Rolle

Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(13), 4644; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10134644 - 5 Jul 2020

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2274

Abstract

Currently, there is great interest in reducing the consumption of fossil fuels (and other non-renewable energy sources) in order to preserve the environment; smart buildings are commonly proposed for this purpose as they are capable of producing their own energy and using it optimally. However, at times, solar energy is not able to supply the energy demand fully; it is mandatory to know the quantity of energy needed to optimize the system. This research focuses on the prediction of output temperature from a solar thermal collector. The aim is to measure solar thermal energy and optimize the energy system of a house (or building). The dataset used in this research has been taken from a real installation in a bio-climate house located on the Sotavento Experimental Wind Farm, in north-west Spain. A hybrid intelligent model has been developed by combining clustering and regression methods such as neural networks, polynomial regression, and support vector machines. The main findings show that, by dividing the dataset into small clusters on the basis of similarity in behavior, it is possible to create more accurate models. Moreover, combining different regression methods for each cluster provides better results than when a global model of the whole dataset is used. In temperature prediction, mean absolute error was lower than 4

^{\circ}

C. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Communication System in Smart Grids)

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25 pages, 559 KiB

Open AccessArticle

State-of-the-Art Integration of Decentralized Energy Management Systems into the German Smart Meter Gateway Infrastructure

by Nils Kroener, Kevin Förderer, Manuel Lösch and Hartmut Schmeck

Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(11), 3665; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10113665 - 26 May 2020

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 4700

Abstract

The German Smart Meter Gateway (SMGW) infrastructure enables digital access to metering data and distributed energy resources by external parties. There are, however, various restrictions in order to guarantee the privacy of consumers, and strong security requirements. Furthermore, in the current state of development, there are still several challenges to overcome in order to implement demand side management (DSM) measures. In this paper, we present a prototype enabling DSM measures within the SMGW infrastructure, using the smart grid traffic light concept. The prototype implements an automated decentralized energy management system (EMS) that optimally controls an electric vehicle charging station. In the development of this prototype, we did not only evaluate five of the seven available SMGW devices, but also push the limits of the infrastructure itself. The experiments demonstrated the successful implementation of the intended DSM measure by the EMS. Even though there are technical guidelines standardizing the functionality of SMGWs, our evaluation shows that there are substantial differences between the individual SMGW devices. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Communication System in Smart Grids)

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13 pages, 630 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Intrusion Detection with Unsupervised Techniques for Network Management Protocols over Smart Grids

by Rafael Alejandro Vega Vega, Pablo Chamoso-Santos, Alfonso González Briones, José-Luis Casteleiro-Roca, Esteban Jove, María del Carmen Meizoso-López, Benigno Antonio Rodríguez-Gómez, Héctor Quintián, Álvaro Herrero, Kenji Matsui, Emilio Corchado and José Luis Calvo-Rolle

Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(7), 2276; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10072276 - 27 Mar 2020

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 1956

Abstract

The present research work focuses on overcoming cybersecurity problems in the Smart Grid. Smart Grids must have feasible data capture and communications infrastructure to be able to manage the huge amounts of data coming from sensors. To ensure the proper operation of next-generation electricity grids, the captured data must be reliable and protected against vulnerabilities and possible attacks. The contribution of this paper to the state of the art lies in the identification of cyberattacks that produce anomalous behaviour in network management protocols. A novel neural projectionist technique (Beta Hebbian Learning, BHL) has been employed to get a general visual representation of the traffic of a network, making it possible to identify any abnormal behaviours and patterns, indicative of a cyberattack. This novel approach has been validated on 3 different datasets, demonstrating the ability of BHL to detect different types of attacks, more effectively than other state-of-the-art methods. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Communication System in Smart Grids)

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26 pages, 1492 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Privacy-Preserving Lightweight Authentication Protocol for Demand Response Management in Smart Grid Environment

by SungJin Yu, KiSung Park, JoonYoung Lee, YoungHo Park, YoHan Park, SangWoo Lee and BoHeung Chung

Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(5), 1758; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10051758 - 4 Mar 2020

Cited by 30 | Viewed by 4087

Abstract

With the development in wireless communication and low-power device, users can receive various useful services such as electric vehicle (EV) charging, smart building, and smart home services at anytime and anywhere in smart grid (SG) environments. The SG devices send demand of electricity to the remote control center and utility center (UC) to use energy services, and UCs handle it for distributing electricity efficiently. However, in SG environments, the transmitted messages are vulnerable to various attacks because information related to electricity is transmitted over an insecure channel. Thus, secure authentication and key agreement are essential to provide secure energy services for legitimate users. In 2019, Kumar et al. presented a secure authentication protocol for demand response management in the SG system. However, we demonstrate that their protocol is insecure against masquerade, the SG device stolen, and session key disclosure attacks and does not ensure secure mutual authentication. Thus, we propose a privacy-preserving lightweight authentication protocol for demand response management in the SG environments to address the security shortcomings of Kumar et al.’s protocol. The proposed protocol withstands various attacks and ensures secure mutual authentication and anonymity. We also evaluated the security features of the proposed scheme using informal security analysis and proved the session key security of proposed scheme using the ROR model. Furthermore, we showed that the proposed protocol achieves secure mutual authentication between the SG devices and the UC using Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic analysis. We also demonstrated that our authentication protocol prevents man-in-the-middle and replay attacks utilizing AVISPA simulation tool and compared the performance analysis with other existing protocols. Therefore, the proposed scheme provides superior safety and efficiency other than existing related protocols and can be suitable for practical SG environments. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Communication System in Smart Grids)

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27 pages, 9366 KiB

Open AccessArticle

On the Use of LoRaWAN for the Monitoring and Control of Distributed Energy Resources in a Smart Campus

by Marco Pasetti, Paolo Ferrari, Diego Rodrigo Cabral Silva, Ivanovitch Silva and Emiliano Sisinni

Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(1), 320; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10010320 - 1 Jan 2020

Cited by 32 | Viewed by 8526

Abstract

The application of the most recent advances of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology to the automation of buildings is emerging as a promising solution to achieve greater efficiencies in energy consumption, and to allow the realization of sustainable models. The application of IoT has been demonstrated as effective in many fields, such as confirmed, for instance, by the Industry 4.0 concepts, which are revolutionizing modern production chains. By following this approach, the use of distributed control architectures and of IoT technologies (both wired and wireless) would result in effective solutions for the management of smart environments composed of groups of buildings, such as campuses. In this case, heterogeneous IoT solutions are typically adopted to satisfy the requirements of the very diverse possible scenarios (e.g., indoor versus outdoor coverage, mobile versus fixed nodes, just to mention a few), making their large-scale integration cumbersome. To cope with this issue, this paper presents an IoT architecture able to transparently manage different communication protocols in smart environments, and investigates its possible application for the monitoring and control of distributed energy resources in a smart campus. In particular, a use–case focused on the integration of the Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) technology is considered to cope with heterogeneous indoor and outdoor communication scenarios. The feasibility analysis of the proposed solution is carried out by computing the scalability limits of the approach, based on the proposed smart campus data model. The results of the study showed that the proposed solution would be able to manage more than 10,000 nodes. An experimental validation of the LoRaWAN technology confirms its suitability in terms of coverage and latency, with a minimum LoRaWAN cell coverage range of 250 m, and a communication latency of about 400 ms. Finally, the advantages of the proposed solution in the supervision and management of a PV system are highlighted in a real-world scenario. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Communication System in Smart Grids)

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