32,590 research outputs found
Scenarios for the development of smart grids in the UK: synthesis report
‘Smart grid’ is a catch-all term for the smart options that could transform the ways society produces, delivers and consumes energy, and potentially the way we conceive of these services. Delivering energy more intelligently will be fundamental to decarbonising the UK electricity system at least possible cost, while maintaining security and reliability of supply.
Smarter energy delivery is expected to allow the integration of more low carbon technologies and to be much more cost effective than traditional methods, as well as contributing to economic growth by opening up new business and innovation opportunities. Innovating new options for energy system management could lead to cost savings of up to £10bn, even if low carbon technologies do not emerge. This saving will be much higher if UK renewable energy targets are achieved.
Building on extensive expert feedback and input, this report describes four smart grid scenarios which consider how the UK’s electricity system might develop to 2050. The scenarios outline how political decisions, as well as those made in regulation, finance, technology, consumer and social behaviour, market design or response, might affect the decisions of other actors and limit or allow the availability of future options. The project aims to explore the degree of uncertainty around the current direction of the electricity system and the complex interactions of a whole host of factors that may lead to any one of a wide range of outcomes. Our addition to this discussion will help decision makers to understand the implications of possible actions and better plan for the future, whilst recognising that it may take any one of a number of forms
Smart Grid Communications: Overview of Research Challenges, Solutions, and Standardization Activities
Optimization of energy consumption in future intelligent energy networks (or
Smart Grids) will be based on grid-integrated near-real-time communications
between various grid elements in generation, transmission, distribution and
loads. This paper discusses some of the challenges and opportunities of
communications research in the areas of smart grid and smart metering. In
particular, we focus on some of the key communications challenges for realizing
interoperable and future-proof smart grid/metering networks, smart grid
security and privacy, and how some of the existing networking technologies can
be applied to energy management. Finally, we also discuss the coordinated
standardization efforts in Europe to harmonize communications standards and
protocols.Comment: To be published in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial
A Taxonomy of Data Grids for Distributed Data Sharing, Management and Processing
Data Grids have been adopted as the platform for scientific communities that
need to share, access, transport, process and manage large data collections
distributed worldwide. They combine high-end computing technologies with
high-performance networking and wide-area storage management techniques. In
this paper, we discuss the key concepts behind Data Grids and compare them with
other data sharing and distribution paradigms such as content delivery
networks, peer-to-peer networks and distributed databases. We then provide
comprehensive taxonomies that cover various aspects of architecture, data
transportation, data replication and resource allocation and scheduling.
Finally, we map the proposed taxonomy to various Data Grid systems not only to
validate the taxonomy but also to identify areas for future exploration.
Through this taxonomy, we aim to categorise existing systems to better
understand their goals and their methodology. This would help evaluate their
applicability for solving similar problems. This taxonomy also provides a "gap
analysis" of this area through which researchers can potentially identify new
issues for investigation. Finally, we hope that the proposed taxonomy and
mapping also helps to provide an easy way for new practitioners to understand
this complex area of research.Comment: 46 pages, 16 figures, Technical Repor
Recommended from our members
A classification of emerging and traditional grid systems
The grid has evolved in numerous distinct phases. It started in the early ’90s as a model of metacomputing in which supercomputers share resources; subsequently, researchers added the ability to share data. This is usually referred to as the first-generation grid. By the late ’90s, researchers had outlined the framework for second-generation grids, characterized by their use of grid middleware systems to “glue” different grid technologies together. Third-generation grids originated in the early millennium when Web technology was combined with second-generation grids. As a result, the invisible grid, in which grid complexity is fully hidden through resource virtualization, started receiving attention. Subsequently, grid researchers identified the requirement for semantically rich knowledge grids, in which middleware technologies are more intelligent and autonomic. Recently, the necessity for grids to support and extend the ambient intelligence vision has emerged. In AmI, humans are surrounded by computing technologies that are unobtrusively embedded in their surroundings.
However, third-generation grids’ current architecture doesn’t meet the requirements of next-generation grids (NGG) and service-oriented knowledge utility (SOKU).4 A few years ago, a group of independent experts, arranged by the European Commission, identified these shortcomings as a way to identify potential European grid research priorities for 2010 and beyond. The experts envision grid systems’ information, knowledge, and processing capabilities as a set of utility services.3 Consequently, new grid systems are emerging to materialize these visions. Here, we review emerging grids and classify them to motivate further research and help establish a solid foundation in this rapidly evolving area
Multi-Layer Cyber-Physical Security and Resilience for Smart Grid
The smart grid is a large-scale complex system that integrates communication
technologies with the physical layer operation of the energy systems. Security
and resilience mechanisms by design are important to provide guarantee
operations for the system. This chapter provides a layered perspective of the
smart grid security and discusses game and decision theory as a tool to model
the interactions among system components and the interaction between attackers
and the system. We discuss game-theoretic applications and challenges in the
design of cross-layer robust and resilient controller, secure network routing
protocol at the data communication and networking layers, and the challenges of
the information security at the management layer of the grid. The chapter will
discuss the future directions of using game-theoretic tools in addressing
multi-layer security issues in the smart grid.Comment: 16 page
Recommended from our members
The role of smart sensor networks for voltage monitoring in smart grids
The large-scale deployment of the Smart Grid paradigm will support the evolution of conventional electrical power systems toward active, flexible and self-healing web energy networks composed of distributed and cooperative energy resources. In a Smart Grid platform, distributed voltage monitoring is one of the main issues to address. In this field, the application of traditional hierarchical monitoring paradigms has some disadvantages that could hinder their application in Smart Grids where the constant growth of grid complexity and the need for massive pervasion of Distribution Generation Systems (DGS) require more scalable, more flexible control and regulation paradigms. To try to overcome these challenges, this paper proposes the concept of a decentralized non-hierarchal voltage monitoring architecture based on intelligent and cooperative smart entities. These devices employ traditional sensors to acquire local bus variables and mutually coupled oscillators to assess the main variables describing the global grid state
- …