Distributed Load Scheduling in Residential Neighborhoods for Coordinated Operation of Multiple Home Energy Management Systems

Recently, home energy management systems (HEMS) are gaining more popularity enabling customers to minimize their electricity bill under time-varying electricity prices. Although they offer a promising solution for better energy management in smart grids, the uncoordinated and autonomous operation of HEMS may lead to some operational problems at the grid level. This paper aims to develop a coordinated framework for the operation of multiple HEMS in a residential neighborhood based on the optimal and secure operation of the grid. In the proposed framework customers cooperate to optimize energy consumption at the neighborhood level and prevent any grid operational constraints violation. A new price-based global and individualized incentives are proposed for customers to respond and adjust loads. The individual customers are rewarded for their cooperation and the network operator benefits by eliminating rebounding network peaks. The alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) technique is used to implement coordinated load scheduling in a distributed manner reducing the computational burden and ensure customer privacy. Simulation results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method in maintaining nominal network conditions while ensuring benefits for individual customers as well as grid operators

Smart Microgrids: Overview and Outlook

The idea of changing our energy system from a hierarchical design into a set of nearly independent microgrids becomes feasible with the availability of small renewable energy generators. The smart microgrid concept comes with several challenges in research and engineering targeting load balancing, pricing, consumer integration and home automation. In this paper we first provide an overview on these challenges and present approaches that target the problems identified. While there exist promising algorithms for the particular field, we see a missing integration which specifically targets smart microgrids. Therefore, we propose an architecture that integrates the presented approaches and defines interfaces between the identified components such as generators, storage, smart and \dq{dumb} devices.Comment: presented at the GI Informatik 2012, Braunschweig Germany, Smart Grid Worksho

Open-Source, Open-Architecture SoftwarePlatform for Plug-InElectric Vehicle SmartCharging in California

This interdisciplinary eXtensible Building Operating System–Vehicles project focuses on controlling plug-in electric vehicle charging at residential and small commercial settings using a novel and flexible open-source, open-architecture charge communication and control platform. The platform provides smart charging functionalities and benefits to the utility, homes, and businesses.This project investigates four important areas of vehicle-grid integration research, integrating technical as well as social and behavioral dimensions: smart charging user needs assessment, advanced load control platform development and testing, smart charging impacts, benefits to the power grid, and smart charging ratepayer benefits

Review on Control of DC Microgrids and Multiple Microgrid Clusters

This paper performs an extensive review on control schemes and architectures applied to dc microgrids (MGs). It covers multilayer hierarchical control schemes, coordinated control strategies, plug-and-play operations, stability and active damping aspects, as well as nonlinear control algorithms. Islanding detection, protection, and MG clusters control are also briefly summarized. All the mentioned issues are discussed with the goal of providing control design guidelines for dc MGs. The future research challenges, from the authors' point of view, are also provided in the final concluding part