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A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2017) | Viewed by 22202

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Prof. Dr. Antonello Monti

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E.ON Energy Research Center, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
Interests: power system dynamics, grid automation; real-time simulation; cloud applications for energy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Ferdinanda Ponci

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Guest Editor

Institute for Automation of Complex Power Systems, RWTH Aachen University, 52064 Aachen, Germany
Interests: electrical power engineering; distributed generation; measurement, monitoring, and automation of electrical distribution systems; distributed control for power systems, monitoring, and control of active electrical distribution grids and urban energy grids; power hardware-in-the-loop platform for the testing of monitoring systems; multiagent control system
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The transformation of the energy system is creating the need for a convergence between the energy and ICT domain. This is particularly true for the electrical grid infrastructure. The so-called Smart Grid is the integration of a distributed intelligent infrastructure on top of the traditional grid. This Special Issue aims at exploring the most advanced examples of interactions of these infrastructures. The main goal is to show how the confluence of Energy and ICT is shaping a completely new scenario for electrical grid operation and planning defining new roles and scenarios. This transformation is affecting all the stakeholders: Distribution grid operators, but also the end customers, now better defined as prosumer for their active role. Papers that present results related to concrete deployments in field test are particularly welcome.

Prof. Dr. Antonello Monti
Prof. Dr. Ferdinanda Ponci
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

distributed intelligence for grid automation
Cloud applications
active distribution grids

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

Open AccessArticle

Design, Implementation and Demonstration of Embedded Agents for Energy Management in Non-Residential Buildings

and

Energies 2017, 10(8), 1106; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10081106 - 29 Jul 2017

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3374

Abstract

With the building sector being responsible for 30% of the total final energy consumption, great interest lies in implementing adequate policies and deploying efficient technologies that would decrease this number. However, building comfort and energy management systems (BCEM) are challenging to manage on account of their increasing complexity with regard to the integration of renewable energy sources or the connection of electrical, thermal and gas grids. Multi-agent~systems (MAS) deal well with such complex issues. This paper presents an MAS for non-residential buildings from the design, implementation and demonstration, both simulation based and in a field test. Starting from an ontology and an attached data model for BCEM application, we elaborated use cases for developing and testing the MAS framework. The building and technical equipment are modeled using the modeling language Modelica under Dymola. The agents are programmed in JADE and communicate with Dymola via TCP/IP and with the real devices via BACnet. Operatively, the~agents can take on different control strategies: normal operation with no optimization, optimization of energy costs, where energy is delivered through the room through the devices that have the lowest operating costs, and relaxation of the comfort constraint, where the costs of the productivity loss under sub-optimal comfort conditions is taken into account during optimization. Comfort is expressed as a function of indoor air temperature. Simulation, including a comparison with a benchmark system, and field test results are presented to demonstrate the features of the proposed BCEM. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue ICT for Energy)

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Open AccessArticle

Bandwidth and Accuracy-Aware State Estimation for Smart Grids Using Software Defined Networks

Alessio Meloni

Paolo Attilio Pegoraro

Luigi Atzori

and

Sara Sulis

Energies 2017, 10(7), 858; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10070858 - 27 Jun 2017

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 4176

Abstract

Smart grid (SG) will be one of the major application domains that will present severe pressures on future communication networks due to the expected huge number of devices that will be connected to it and that will impose stringent quality transmission requirements. To address this challenge, there is a need for a joint management of both monitoring and communication systems, so as to achieve a flexible and adaptive management of the SG services. This is the issue addressed in this paper, which provides the following major contributions. We define a new strategy to optimize the accuracy of the state estimation (SE) of the electric grid based on available network bandwidth resources and the sensing intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) installed in the field. In particular, we focus on phasor measurement units (PMUs) as measurement devices. We propose the use of the software defined networks (SDN) technologies to manage the available network bandwidth, which is then assigned by the controller to the forwarding devices to allow for the flowing of the data streams generated by the PMUs, by considering an optimization routine to maximize the accuracy of the resulting SE. Additionally, the use of SDN allows for adding and removing PMUs from the monitoring architecture without any manual intervention. We also provide the details of our implementation of the SDN solution, which is used to make simulations with an IEEE 14-bus test network in order to show performance in terms of bandwidth management and estimation accuracy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue ICT for Energy)

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Open AccessArticle

Next Generation Real-Time Smart Meters for ICT Based Assessment of Grid Data Inconsistencies

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Energies 2017, 10(7), 857; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10070857 - 27 Jun 2017

Cited by 26 | Viewed by 4842

Abstract

The latest technological developments are challenging for finding new solutions to mitigate the massive integration of renewable-based electricity generation in the electrical networks and to support new and dynamic energy and ancillary services markets. Smart meters have become ubiquitous equipment in the low voltage grid, enabled by the decision made in many countries to support massive deployments. The smart meter is the only equipment mandatory to be mounted when supplying a grid connected user, as it primarily has the function to measure delivered and/or produced energy on its common coupling point with the network, as technical and legal support for billing. Active distribution networks need new functionalities, to cope with the bidirectional energy flow behaviour of the grid, and many smart grid requirements need to be implemented in the near future. However there is no real coupling between smart metering systems and smart grids, as there is not yet a synergy using the opportunity of the high deployment level in smart metering. The paper presents a new approach for managing the smart metering and smart grid orchestration by presenting a new general design based on an unbundled smart meter (USM) concept, labelled as next generation open real-time smart meters (NORM), for integrating the smart meter, phasor measurement unit (PMU) and cyber-security through an enhanced smart metering gateway (SMG). NORM is intended to be deployed everywhere at the prosumer’s interface to the grid, as it is usually now done with the standard meter. Furthermore, rich data acquired from NORM is used to demonstrate the potential of assessing grid data inconsistencies at a higher level, as function to be deployed in distribution security monitoring centers, to address the higher level cyber-security threats, such as false data injections and to allow secure grid operations and complex market activities at the same time. The measures are considering only non-sensitive data from a privacy perspective, and is therefore able to be applied everywhere in the grid, down to the end-customer level, where a citizen’s personal data protection is an important aspect. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue ICT for Energy)

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Open AccessArticle

Prototyping a Software Defined Utility

Ramon Martín de Pozuelo

Agustín Zaballos

Joan Navarro

and

Guiomar Corral

Energies 2017, 10(6), 818; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10060818 - 16 Jun 2017

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 4345

Abstract

The smart grid can be seen as a hybrid system composed by many systems. From a large scale point of view, it combines the electric power system itself and a heterogeneous information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure. Additionally, these systems are composed by many building blocks that are designed and managed as separated systems which are hard to fully integrate between each other. Relying on the experiences arisen and the knowledge gathered from the partners during the development of the FP7 European projects INTEGRIS (intelligent electrical grid sensor communications) and FINESCE (future internet smart utility services), this paper presents the software defined utility (SDU) concept for the management of the smart grid and its security, which advocates for the migration of the utility infrastructure to software systems instead of relying on complex and rigid hardware based systems. Following this approach, SDU proposes the evolution of power systems’ ICT and the usage of programmable commodity hardware, low-cost sensors, and reliable high-speed IP-based communications underneath. More concretely, this paper proposes some building blocks for the deployment of the SDU (flexible data management infrastructure, context-aware security and web of things interface) and evaluates their functionalities and benefits for the smart grids of the future. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue ICT for Energy)

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Open AccessArticle

IEC 61850 Configuration Solution to Distributed Intelligence in Distribution Grid Automation

and

Energies 2017, 10(4), 528; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10040528 - 13 Apr 2017

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 4791

Abstract

To solve the configuration issue when using International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61850 for distributed intelligence in Distribution Automation Systems (DAS), this paper proposes the configuration solution in terms of semantic models and processing methods. Firstly, the special requirements of the DAS configuration are analyzed, consisting of the system boundary of a configuration project, the topology configuration for distributed applications, and the automatic identification of the Intelligent Electronic Devices (IED). The new models of Process, Line, and other elements are then presented based on the System Configuration Language (SCL) to describe the distribution network topology. The planned contents are allocated into a new format of the Configured IED Description (CID) file to realize the distributed applications. A register service is designed, which fulfills the automatic identification of IEDs when they are remotely placed into a DAS. The service checks the configuration status in real-time and automates the whole configuration engineering process. The case study shows that the proposed solution allows an IED to detect the real-time topology and re-establish the data flow configuration with peer IEDs independently from the master station; thus the distributed applications can be performed more autonomously and efficiently. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue ICT for Energy)

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