SEMINAR-IV

12) The different energy management techniques in smart grid used

nowadays:
Power is considered the basic driving block of human life; this significant
power penetration requires an efficient energy generation and distribution to meet the
needed quality of service. The existing power grid's infrastructure doesn't allow for any
control or smart management of energy generation and distribution. It is typically a
one-way communication system in which the utility controls the power flow to
consumers through embedded systems. It lacks system flexibility and intelligence
needed to perform self-healing actions. Robustness is achieved via redundant
components deployed at different points; these components have no mechanisms to
take instantaneous decisions in case of unexpected failures. In addition, the rapidly
growing population all over the world increases the energy demand over time. As a
result, more pressure is put on power generation and transmission in the actual power
grid. The climate change requires a rapid decrease of gas emission; thus, the adoption
of environment-friendly energy resources is a stringent requirement for energy
production in the future.

To overcome these limitations, the Smart Grid is proposed as an efficient

solution combining the power grid with a robust communication network. The Smart
Grid offers many advantages from energy generation to consumption, and are as
follow:

 Power Generation, in which the power plants and substations are monitored with
sensors that send their periodic measurements to the control plane. It is used for
remote machinery maintenance and efficient scheduling of power generation;

 Power Delivery, in which the power transmission and distribution is monitored via
sensors to ensure the highest quality of service;

 Power Utilization, in which the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and

Demand Management System (DMS) allow for a smarter control of power utilization via
consumers profiling and load shifting.

Scheduling and energy management are the main techniques used to

meet the goals discussed above. Many subsystems and algorithms exchange data and
measurements to improve power generation and utilization. The article discusses first
the Demand-Response concept, which is a building block of the Demand Management
System (DMS). The second section focuses on appliance scheduling, or load shifting,
followed by load forecasting (LF). LF is helpful to predict energy needs for a given
period of time. The article then goes through Unit Commitment, a technique used to
find the best cost-efficient generation schedule for power plants. The last part of the
article discusses the architectures used to deploy energy management algorithms,
mainly the centralized control and decentralized multi-agent system.

Demand-Response (DR) refers to the reduction in power

demand by load shifting from peak to off-peak periods. It relies on the consumers'
interaction with the DMS alerts to manage their own electricity consumption. Hence, the
customer can shift cross-elastic loads, such as washing machines, to another period.
However, for self-elastic loads, or static loads such as the fridge and home lighting,
other measures can be taken to enhance their power consumption. Therefore, customer
participation is encouraged for efficient energy consumption. It is achieved through the
DMS, composed of subsystems and algorithms that analyze data and measurements.

The DMS has two main activities: load shifting and energy efficiency and conservation.
The first activity is achieved through DR and aims to reduce the overall demand weight
on the grid to avoid blackouts. The second activity encourages the consumers to give-
up on energy for money while receiving the same end service. These activities show the
DMS importance in achieving efficient balance between power generation and
utilization. This system is composed of the following elements : Supervisory Control and
Data Acquisition system (SCADA), Remote Terminal Unit (RTU), Advanced Metering
Infrastructure (AMI), State Estimation Algorithms (SEA) and the Generation & Load
Forecast System (GLFS) algorithms.

LOAD SHIFTING

For efficient power utilization, the DMS allows loads shifting to avoid system congestion.
Concerning load shifting, the DMS generates schedules for home appliances based on
consumption profiles and energy tariffs. Consumption profiling is achieved by the
Energy Management System (EMS) inside the home: this controlling unit is directly
connected to the appliances and generates schedules based on the received energy
requests. Besides, EMS receives energy tariffs from the pricing market via the smart
meter, based on one of the pricing schemes discussed in table 1: Time of Use (TOU)
Pricing, Critical Peaking Pricing (CPP) or Real Time Pricing (RTP).

LOAD FORECASTING

Besides load shifting, load forecasting is another technique used to predict energy
needs using previous data. Load forecasting (LF) aims to keep a balance between
demand and supply . There are three types of Load Forecasting: Short Term LF, which
is an hourly load prediction for reduced daily costs with higher quality of service;
Medium Term LF, which is a weekly, monthly and even yearly load prediction for
efficient operational planning; Long Term LF, which is a load prediction for 50 years and
more for efficient expansion and equipment update planning.

UNIT COMMITMENT

As previously defined, UC refers to the optimization problem used to find the optimal
operation schedule for the generating units at frequent intervals for different loads,
environment, system and cost constraints. Unit Commitment is considered an important
scheduling problem in the power grid due to its significant impact on power generation,
delivery and utilization. It is combined with system modeling and state estimation in
order to plan ahead of time the energy demand and keep the grid performance stable.

Unit Commitment controls the performance of the Smart Grid since it defines the ramp
rates and stability of the power grid in presence of RERs. It generates schedules for
power plants in order to meet the demand based on data received from different
subsystems in the grid. Therefore, the Smart Grid should have a robust and reliable
communication network along with a wireless sensor network for real-time
measurements and secure data exchange.

IMPLEMENTATION OF ENERGY MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES

A. Centralized Control Architecture

In the centralized control architecture, energy and demand management algorithms are
deployed in the same controlling entity (i.e one or many computers) in the main control
office. The main advantages of this architecture are the reduced maintenance cost and
communication overhead since all the components are kept into the same place.
However, a failure in one component can cause cascading failures to all the other
components. In that case, there would be an overhead to stabilize the grid each time
there is an error in the control office.

B. Decentralized Multi-Agent System

Another solution proposed by researchers to solve the issues raised by the centralized
architecture is the decentralized multi-agent system (MAS). In fact, the components of
the grid are gathered into groups depending on their tasks and objectives, then an
agent is assigned to them. A centralized agent is added to the system in order to
manage the overall performance of the other agents and control the stability of the
grid. This system has many benefits: autonomy with decision-making, self-healing in
case of failures, reactivity to local changes, efficient tracking and self organization with
the centralized agent.

CONCLUSION

The Smart Grid is a promising solution to overcome all limitations of the current power
grid. In addition to integrated green energy, the Smart Grid offers a wide range of
control and monitoring functionalities to manage power generation, delivery and
utilization. This article covers the most important methodologies and concepts related
to energy management used in the Smart Grid, particularly Demand Management
System (DMS). DMS functionalities result in a significant decrease in CO2 footprint and
gas emissions as well as energy wastage.