Current Smart Grid Status - Different Country Stories/Experience

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By Mohamed Lotfi, João P.S. Catalão, Hossam A. Gabbar

Enabling energy “prosumers” (at the same time producers and consumers) in modern power systems is a substantial paradigm shift in the way energy is generated, used, and traded as a resource. It is often perceived that energy prosumers, thanks to peer-to-peer energy trading, are a result of recent IoT tools and applications in smart grids. Nevertheless, the prosumers’ can be traced all the way back to a triad of events in the 1970’s: economically viable microgeneration, environmental concerns over emissions, and concerns about secure supply of fossil fuels. The USA, UK, and the EU were the pioneers and main drivers of this transition, and therefore the investigation focuses on their experience. This piece traces the rise of energy prosumers through the evolution of their markets and legislation, in addition to scientific research trends over the past four to five decades. Via a global perspective, one can gain a deeper understanding of how this transformation of the energy sector came to pass, leading to the recently proposed concept of "Prosumer-Centered Democratic Energy Systems". This discussion is of particular importance for engineers and policymakers, as they find themselves facing a wave of unprecedented technical breakthroughs and societal changes, to which existing structures and mechanisms must be adapted.

By Sheetal Chandak and Pravat Kumar Rout

"Everything works and will continue to work as long as we have electricity. It’s what keeps the lights on, the oxygen flowing, the information going. Everything is the grid": Peggy Noonan (Wall Street Journal).

By I Safak Bayram

Despite a decade-long global research and development efforts on smart grids, a unique set of challenges still remain in the countries like Qatar where smart grid implementations are shaped by its hot arid climate, socio-economic norms, and the limitations of the current enabling technologies. This article summarizes the smart grid activities conducted for more than five years by various Qatari stakeholders to develop, test, and demonstrate different smart grid components.

By Santanu Mishra, Ramanuja Panigrahi, Suresh Chandra Srivastava

US-India collaborative for smart distribution System with Storage (UI-ASSIST) is a consortium that brings together 14 organizations from India and 16 organizations from the US to work on the future smart distribution grid. Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur and Washington State University (WSU), Pullman, WA, lead this effort from India and USA, respectively. This project aims at addressing the essential issues related to the adoption of smart grid concepts such as Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) and storage integration, communication, cybersecurity, etc., in the distribution network for its efficient and reliable operation while providing optimal socio-economic benefits.


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