Software defined communication framework for smart grid to meet energy demands in smart cities

In smart cities, the electricity is an essential component since it preserves a certain level of residents' life quality and provisions the entire spectrum of their economic activities. Thus, a smart way is essential to develop cities without disregarding energy issues. In this scope, the smart grid paradigm offers power supply in an efficient, sustainable and economical manner with minimal impact on the environment and can meet the future energy demands. However, real-time monitoring and control of the smart grid (SG) for continuous and quality-aware power supply in smart cities (SCs) is challenging and requires an advanced quality of service (QoS)-aware communication framework. In this context, this research aims to present a novel data-gathering scheme by using the Internet of software-defined mobile sinks (SDMSs) and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in the smart grid. The extensive simulation results conducted through the EstiNet9.0 indicate that the designed scheme outperforms existing approaches and achieves its defined goals for events-drive applications in the SG

Increasing the penetration of renewable energy through community energy projects. An economic approach based on biform games

In 2014, the Chilean government promulgated the Law 20,571. This law gives to regulated clients, mainly residential electricity customers, the right to produce energy/electricity for self-consumption and sell any surplus to the grid. After five years of implementation, including an update in 2018, the installed capacity of these projects is still very low. In contrast, in Scotland it is possible to find a much higher citizen participation in energy production through more collective initiatives, specifically community energy projects. This situation begs important questions about the effectiveness of net billing schemes in promoting citizen participation in energy production. In this doctoral thesis, a variety of tools inspired by game theory, social science, and mathematical programming are used and adapted to answer these questions. This leads to the following findings. Firstly, the current Chilean net billing scheme may not be the best support mechanism for citizen-led energy production developments. Secondly, some residential electricity customers would be willing to participate in local energy initiatives by devoting money and/or time, even when their main concern is the lack of financial resources necessary to fund such projects, and project ownership can influence this willingness. Thirdly, community energy projects can be the best strategy to follow for residential electricity customers in Scotland and Chile, although cost subsidisation can further improve community energy incentives. Even when the incumbents do not know their share of the benefits at the time of choosing a particular energy production scheme or mechanism, community energy projects present more opportunities to be implemented in comparison with net billing schemes in both countries. Finally, under specific circumstances, community energy deployment can have positive effects on variables like social welfare, consumer surplus, nodal prices, and carbon dioxide emissions. Based on these findings, we then draw conclusions and recommendations, which can help further development in the community energy sector, particularly in Chile