Feasibility of a Smart Grid on Nantucket

Nantucket residents pay uncommonly high electricity rates because delivery of electricity to the island is costly and demand for it fluctuates widely by season. Accordingly, the goal of this report is to assess the feasibility of various smart grid scenarios and conservation initiatives that could reduce the cost and consumption of electricity island-wide. Based on our analysis of the associated benefits and costs, we concluded that a smart grid could conservatively save island residents up to $500,000 annually, and pay for itself in only five years. Understanding the pattern of use on Nantucket and the potential of smart grids, we recommend seeking further consultation

Assessment of novel distributed control techniques to address network constraints with demand side management

The development of sustainable generation, a reliable electricity supply and affordable tariffs are the primary requirements to address the uncertainties in different future energy scenarios. Due to the predicted increase in Distributed Generation (DG) and load profile changes in future scenarios, there are significant operational and planning challenges facing netwrok operators. These changes in the power system distribution network require a new Active Network Management (ANM) control system to manage distribution constraint issues such as thermal rating, voltage, and fault levels. The future smart grid focuses on harnessing the control potential from demand side via bidirectional power flow, transparent information communication, and contractual customer participation. Demand Side Management (DSM) is considered as one of the effective solutions to defer network capacity reinforcement, increase energy efficiency, facilitate renewable access, and implement low carbon energy strategy. From the Distribution Network Operator's (DNO) perspective, the control opportunity from Demand Response (DR) and Decentralized Energy Resource (DER) contributes on capacity investment reduction, energy efficiency, and enable low carbon technologies. This thesis develops a new decentralized control system for dealing effectively with the constraint issues in the Medium Voltage (MV) distribution network. In the decentralized control system, two novel control approaches are proposed to autonomously relieve the network thermal constraint via DNO's direct control of the real power in network components during the operation period. The first approach, Demand Response for Power Flow Management (DR-PFM), implements the DSM peak clipping control of Active Demand (AD), whilst the second approach, Hybrid Control for Power Flow Management (HC-PFM), implements the hybrid control of both AD and DER. The novelty of these two new control algorithms consists in the application of a Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) based programming model on decision making of the real power curtailment to relieve the network thermal overload. In the Constraint Programming (CP) model, three constraints are identified: a preference constraint, and a network constraint. The control approaches effectively solve the above constraint problem in the CSP model within 5 seconds' time response. The control performance is influenced by the pre-determined variable, domain and constraint settings. These novel control approaches take advantages on flexible control, fast response and demand participation enabling in the future smart grid.The development of sustainable generation, a reliable electricity supply and affordable tariffs are the primary requirements to address the uncertainties in different future energy scenarios. Due to the predicted increase in Distributed Generation (DG) and load profile changes in future scenarios, there are significant operational and planning challenges facing netwrok operators. These changes in the power system distribution network require a new Active Network Management (ANM) control system to manage distribution constraint issues such as thermal rating, voltage, and fault levels. The future smart grid focuses on harnessing the control potential from demand side via bidirectional power flow, transparent information communication, and contractual customer participation. Demand Side Management (DSM) is considered as one of the effective solutions to defer network capacity reinforcement, increase energy efficiency, facilitate renewable access, and implement low carbon energy strategy. From the Distribution Network Operator's (DNO) perspective, the control opportunity from Demand Response (DR) and Decentralized Energy Resource (DER) contributes on capacity investment reduction, energy efficiency, and enable low carbon technologies. This thesis develops a new decentralized control system for dealing effectively with the constraint issues in the Medium Voltage (MV) distribution network. In the decentralized control system, two novel control approaches are proposed to autonomously relieve the network thermal constraint via DNO's direct control of the real power in network components during the operation period. The first approach, Demand Response for Power Flow Management (DR-PFM), implements the DSM peak clipping control of Active Demand (AD), whilst the second approach, Hybrid Control for Power Flow Management (HC-PFM), implements the hybrid control of both AD and DER. The novelty of these two new control algorithms consists in the application of a Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) based programming model on decision making of the real power curtailment to relieve the network thermal overload. In the Constraint Programming (CP) model, three constraints are identified: a preference constraint, and a network constraint. The control approaches effectively solve the above constraint problem in the CSP model within 5 seconds' time response. The control performance is influenced by the pre-determined variable, domain and constraint settings. These novel control approaches take advantages on flexible control, fast response and demand participation enabling in the future smart grid

Distributed Control Approaches for Power Systems

The energy industry is undergoing through a reconstruction from a monopolistic electricity market to a more open and transactive one. The next ­generation grid is a level playing field in terms of electricity transactions, where all customers have an equal opportunity. The emerging concepts of electricity prosumers are expected to have a significant impact on the retail electricity market. As a result, there is an urgent need to control the interactions among numerous consumers and pro­sumers. The existing control approaches can be divided into three categories, namely, centralized control, decentralized control, and distributed control. The majority of existing literature focuses on the centralized control. In most cases, the dedicated communication links are required to ex­change data between the central controller and the local agents. The centralized control approaches are suitable for relatively small­-scale systems without reconstructing the existing communication and control networks. However, as the number of consumers and prosumers are increasing to hun­dreds of thousands, there are some technical barriers on the centralized control-­based economic operations such as heavy computation burden and single point of failure. The decentralized control is an intermediate solution to address the above mentioned challenges. The overall objective is to maximize the benefits of local agents and there is no guarantee that the decisions made by each local agents can contribute to the global optimal decision of the entire system. The distributed control has the potential to solve the economic operation problems of multiple consumers and prosumers. Lo­cal agents can share information through two-­way communication links in order to find the global optimal decision. Application of distributed control methods in power system increase system’s scalability, alleviate monopoly and monopsony, improve the privacy and distribute computational load among various entities.Ph.D.College of Engineering & Computer ScienceUniversity of Michigan-Dearbornhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/151932/1/Hajir Pourbabak Final Dissertation.pdfDescription of Hajir Pourbabak Final Dissertation.pdf : Dissertatio

Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Energy Efficiency in Domestic Appliances and Lighting

At the EEDAL'15 conference 128 papers dealing with energy consumption and energy efficiency improvements for the residential sector have been presented. Papers focused policies and programmes, technologies and consumer behaviour. Special focus was on standards and labels, demand response and smart meters. All the paper s have been peer reviewed by experts in the sector.JRC.F.7-Renewables and Energy Efficienc