QoE-aware power management in vehicle-to-grid networks:a matching-theoretic approach

Frequency, time and places of charging and discharging have critical impact on the Quality of Experience (QoE) of using Electric Vehicles (EVs). EV charging and discharging scheduling schemes should consider both the QoE of using EV and the load capacity of the power grid. In this paper, we design a traveling plan-aware scheduling scheme for EV charging in driving pattern and a cooperative EV charging and discharging scheme in parking pattern to improve the QoE of using EV and enhance the reliability of the power grid. For traveling planaware scheduling, the assignment of EVs to Charging Stations (CSs) is modeled as a many-to-one matching game and the Stable Matching Algorithm (SMA) is proposed. For cooperative EV charging and discharging in parking pattern, the electricity exchange between charging EVs and discharging EVs in the same parking lot is formulated as a many-to-many matching model with ties, and we develop the Pareto Optimal Matching Algorithm (POMA). Simulation results indicates that the SMA can significantly improve the average system utility for EV charging in driving pattern, and the POMA can increase the amount of electricity offloaded from the grid which is helpful to enhance the reliability of the power grid

Time-constrained nature-inspired optimization algorithms for an efficient energy management system in smart homes and buildings

This paper proposes two bio-inspired heuristic algorithms, the Moth-Flame Optimization (MFO) algorithm and Genetic Algorithm (GA), for an Energy Management System (EMS) in smart homes and buildings. Their performance in terms of energy cost reduction, minimization of the Peak to Average power Ratio (PAR) and end-user discomfort minimization are analysed and discussed. Then, a hybrid version of GA and MFO, named TG-MFO (Time-constrained Genetic-Moth Flame Optimization), is proposed for achieving the aforementioned objectives. TG-MFO not only hybridizes GA and MFO, but also incorporates time constraints for each appliance to achieve maximum end-user comfort. Different algorithms have been proposed in the literature for energy optimization. However, they have increased end-user frustration in terms of increased waiting time for home appliances to be switched ON. The proposed TG-MFO algorithm is specially designed for nearly-zero end-user discomfort due to scheduling of appliances, keeping in view the timespan of individual appliances. Renewable energy sources and battery storage units are also integrated for achieving maximum end-user benefits. For comparison, five bio-inspired heuristic algorithms, i.e., Genetic Algorithm (GA), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), Cuckoo Search Algorithm (CSA), Firefly Algorithm (FA) and Moth-Flame Optimization (MFO), are used to achieve the aforementioned objectives in the residential sector in comparison with TG-MFO. The simulations through MATLAB show that our proposed algorithm has reduced the energy cost up to 32.25% for a single user and 49.96% for thirty users in a residential sector compared to unscheduled load

Real-Time Pricing Strategy Based on the Stability of Smart Grid for Green Internet of Things

The ever increasing demand of energy efficiency and the strong awareness of environment have led to the enhanced interests in green Internet of things (IoTs). How to efficiently deliver power, especially, with the smart grid based on the stability of network becomes a challenge for green IoTs. Therefore, in this paper we present a novel real-time pricing strategy based on the network stability in the green IoTs enabled smart grid. Firstly, the outage is analyzed by considering the imbalance of power supply and demand as well as the load uncertainty. Secondly, the problem of power supply with multiple-retailers is formulated as a Stackelberg game, where the optimal price can be obtained with the maximal profit for retailers and users. Thirdly, the stability of price is analyzed under the constraints. In addition, simulation results show the efficiency of the proposed strategy

Energy sustainable paradigms and methods for future mobile networks: A survey

In this survey, we discuss the role of energy in the design of future mobile networks and, in particular, we advocate and elaborate on the use of energy harvesting (EH) hardware as a means to decrease the environmental footprint of 5G technology. To take full advantage of the harvested (renewable) energy, while still meeting the quality of service required by dense 5G deployments, suitable management techniques are here reviewed, highlighting the open issues that are still to be solved to provide eco-friendly and cost-effective mobile architectures. Several solutions have recently been proposed to tackle capacity, coverage and efficiency problems, including: C-RAN, Software Defined Networking (SDN) and fog computing, among others. However, these are not explicitly tailored to increase the energy efficiency of networks featuring renewable energy sources, and have the following limitations: (i) their energy savings are in many cases still insufficient and (ii) they do not consider network elements possessing energy harvesting capabilities. In this paper, we systematically review existing energy sustainable paradigms and methods to address points (i) and (ii), discussing how these can be exploited to obtain highly efficient, energy self-sufficient and high capacity networks. Several open issues have emerged from our review, ranging from the need for accurate energy, transmission and consumption models, to the lack of accurate data traffic profiles, to the use of power transfer, energy cooperation and energy trading techniques. These challenges are here discussed along with some research directions to follow for achieving sustainable 5G systems.Comment: Accepted by Elsevier Computer Communications, 21 pages, 9 figure

An Electricity Price-Aware Open-Source Smart Socket for the Internet of Energy

[Abstracts] The Internet of Energy (IoE) represents a novel paradigm where electrical power systems work cooperatively with smart devices to increase the visibility of energy consumption and create safer, cleaner and sustainable energy systems. The implementation of IoE services involves the use of multiple components, like embedded systems, power electronics or sensors, which are an essential part of the infrastructure dedicated to the generation and distribution energy and the one required by the final consumer. This article focuses on the latter and presents a smart socket system that collects the information about energy price and makes use of sensors and actuators to optimize home energy consumption according to the user preferences. Specifically, this article provides three main novel contributions. First, what to our knowledge is the first hardware prototype that manages in a practical real-world scenario the price values obtained from a public electricity operator is presented. The second contribution is related to the definition of a novel wireless sensor network communications protocol based on Wi-Fi that allows for creating an easy-to-deploy smart plug system that self-organizes and auto-configures to collect the sensed data, minimizing user intervention. Third, it is provided a thorough description of the design of one of the few open-source smart plug systems, including its communications architecture, the protocols implemented, the main sensing and actuation components and the most relevant pieces of the software. Moreover, with the aim of illustrating the capabilities of the smart plug system, the results of different experiments performed are shown. Such experiments evaluate in real-world scenarios the system’s ease of use, its communications range and its performance when using HTTPS. Finally, the economic savings are estimated for different appliances, concluding that, in the practical situation proposed, the smart plug system allows certain energy-demanding appliances to save almost €70 per yearGalicia. Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria; ED431C 2016-045Galicia. Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria; ED341D R2016/012Galicia. Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria; ED431G/01Agencia Estatal de Investigación; TEC2013-47141-C4-1-RAgencia Estatal de Investigación; TEC2015-69648-REDCAgencia Estatal de Investigación; TEC2016-75067-C4-1-

Internet of things (IoT) based adaptive energy management system for smart homes

PhD ThesisInternet of things enhances the flexibility of measurements under different environments, the development of advanced wireless sensors and communication networks on the smart grid infrastructure would be essential for energy efficiency systems. It makes deployment of a smart home concept easy and realistic. The smart home concept allows residents to control, monitor and manage their energy consumption with minimal wastage. The scheduling of energy usage enables forecasting techniques to be essential for smart homes. This thesis presents a self-learning home management system based on machine learning techniques and energy management system for smart homes. Home energy management system, demand side management system, supply side management system, and power notification system are the major components of the proposed self-learning home management system. The proposed system has various functions including price forecasting, price clustering, power forecasting alert, power consumption alert, and smart energy theft system to enhance the capabilities of the self-learning home management system. These functions were developed and implemented through the use of computational and machine learning technologies. In order to validate the proposed system, real-time power consumption data were collected from a Singapore smart home and a realistic experimental case study was carried out. The case study had proven that the developed system performing well and increased energy awareness to the residents. This proposed system also showcases its customizable ability according to different types of environments as compared to traditional smart home models. Forecasting systems for the electricity market generation have become one of the foremost research topics in the power industry. It is essential to have a forecasting system that can accurately predict electricity generation for planning and operation in the electricity market. This thesis also proposed a novel system called multi prediction system and it is developed based on long short term memory and gated recurrent unit models. This proposed system is able to predict the electricity market generation with high accuracy. Multi Prediction System is based on four stages which include a data collecting and pre-processing module, a multi-input feature model, multi forecast model and mean absolute percentage error. The data collecting and pre-processing module preprocess the real-time data using a window method. Multi-input feature model uses single input feeding method, double input feeding method and multiple feeding method for features input to the multi forecast model. Multi forecast model integrates long short term memory and gated recurrent unit variations such as regression model, regression with time steps model, memory between batches model and stacked model to predict the future generation of electricity. The mean absolute percentage error calculation was utilized to evaluate the accuracy of the prediction. The proposed system achieved high accuracy results to demonstrate its performance

On the Performance of Adaptive Bitrate Streaming and Parallel Cloud Applications

As shown in recent studies, video streaming is by far the biggest category of backbone Internet traffic in the US. As a measure to reduce the cost of highly over-provisioned physical infrastructures while remaining the quality of video services, many streaming service providers started to use cloud services, where physical resources can be dynamically allocated based on current demand. In this dissertation, we seek to evaluate and improve the performance for both Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) video streaming and cloud applications. First, we present a set of measurement studies for ABR streaming applications. Using the data from the application, network, and physical layers in different network environments, we identify the key factors that can impact the quality of video delivering services. Then we develop and evaluate a set of new ABR streaming quality adaptation algorithms to improve the user playback experience. In addition, we explore the options for better energy efficiency of ABR video transcoding services and parallel cloud applications. We define a set of energy management policies to enable the utilization of renewable energy sources. We show that, for both applications, by effectively utilizing the renewable energy, our policies can significantly reduce the grid energy usage and corresponding energy cost, while ensuring a satisfying application performance

Integrating renewable energy resources into the smart grid: recent developments in information and communication technologies

Rising energy costs, losses in the present-day electricity grid, risks from nuclear power generation, and global environmental changes are motivating a transformation of the conventional ways of generating electricity. Globally, there is a desire to rely more on renewable energy resources (RERs) for electricity generation. RERs reduce green house gas emissions and may have economic benefits, e.g., through applying demand side management with dynamic pricing so as to shift loads from fossil fuel-based generators to RERs. The electricity grid is presently evolving towards an intelligent grid, the so-called smart grid (SG). One of the major goals of the future SG is to move towards 100% electricity generation from RERs, i.e., towards a 100% renewable grid. However, the disparate, intermittent, and typically widely geographically distributed nature of RERs complicates the integration of RERs into the SG. Moreover, individual RERs have generally lower capacity than conventional fossil-fuel plants, and these RERs are based on a wide spectrum of different technologies. In this article, we give an overview of recent efforts that aim to integrate RERs into the SG. We outline the integration of RERs into the SG along with their supporting communication networks. We also discuss ongoing projects that seek to integrate RERs into the SG around the globe. Finally, we outline future research directions on integrating RERs into the SG