April – Smart Grid Business Modeling 

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Written by Hossam A. Gabbar

A Distribution System is a key segment in the energy and power system. With the ongoing efforts in modernizing the power grid and leading towards a Smart Grid, the efforts in focusing on strengthening the distribution segment have gained focus. As per a Report Card on America’s Infrastructure, Distribution infrastructure struggles with reliability and 92% of all outages occurring along these segments. So, we need implementation of relevant programs, technologies and solutions to strengthen the DS grid to enhance reliability and resiliency in the changing scenario of regulatory compliance, DER penetration, and others.

Written by Tazrin Jahan Priyanka

With the ongoing issues related to Decarbonization and Net Zero emissions, there is a need for more penetration of renewable sources, like solar, to be a part of the power grid. However, many indigenous communities currently relying on expensive and polluting diesel fuel for power generation have a great potential to meet their energy needs from Carbon-free sources like solar with enhanced reliability.

Written by Gaetano Zizzo, Biagio Di Pietra, Rossano Musca, and Mauro Galluzzo

The increase in distributed energy production from renewable energy sources (RES) is leading to a change of the power grid with generation closer to consumption centers but at the same time, requiring new measures to ensure stability and security of supply. Recently, EU (European Union) has defined the concept of “Renewable Energy Community” (REC) as an innovative model through which end-users can share energy produced from renewables [1]. Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) and controllable loads are usually associated to these communities for maximizing end users’ energy self-consumption. Nevertheless, from a systemic point of view, it is very important to assess the effects of changes in power profiles at the nodes which renewable energy communities are connected to.

Written by Adel El-Shahat

One of the biggest challenges that is facing modern transportation now, and in the future, is to completely transition to sustainable e-mobility. So, this research targets to develop a feasibility study and a prototype implementation of solar roads with wireless charging capabilities and to investigate the use of small-scale vortex bladeless turbines along the roads. Because there is an essential need for such viability research to incorporate wireless power transfer technology with solar roadways and investigate the influence of magnetic fields to alleviate the related matters, mainly the lessening in mutual coupling owing to eddy currents produced in the back part piece of the solar cell. Additionally, reducing the cost of the wireless power charging pad materials, and optimal solar power generation. Consequently, various coils and materials have to be researched to reduce losses, identify charging pads thermal and power density boundaries, investigate cooling issues, and build efficient layouts/ systems. To satisfy these needs, solar roadways equipped with inductive wireless systems will be investigated and implemented via developing magnetic field allocation models and studying their effects on solar roadways to help the current, and future roads designers.

Written by Bassam Al-Hanahi, Iftekhar Ahmad, Daryoush Habibi, and Asma Aziz

The electrification of commercial vehicles is one of the promising solutions for reducing the global emission of greenhouse gases considering that almost 40% of global CO2 emissions is contributed by the road transport sector [1]. This has motivated many governments to support zero-emission vehicles through incentives and tax reduction for transition to electric vehicles. This solution comes with many challenges and the availability of sufficient and efficient charging infrastructure is one of challenge. As compared with light passenger EV that has small battery size, Commercial Electric Vehicles (CEVs) comes with large battery size that requires high power charging infrastructure. In addition, CEVs operate on daily operational schedules that reflect daily business hours. These operational schedules may restrict the charging of CEVs as compared with EVs.


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IEEE Smart Grid Bulletin Compendium

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