Smart Grid - Software Advances

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Written by Heng Chen and Ryan Burg

In response to accelerating rates of DER adoption, electric utilities are demonstrating advanced technologies to maintain system reliability without overloading grid assets or exceeding voltage limits. To that end, Utilities can avail themselves of a wide range of approaches such as traditional system upgrades, grid hardening, energy storage, and analytical software solutions. While traditional investments are the tried-and-true option for system reliability and capacity, alternative approaches have the potential to support alternative use cases in new ways.

Written by Ramon Gallart Fernandez and Chloé Coral

The BD4OPEM (BD4OPEM) project aims to design, develop and deploy a marketplace to provide innovative energy services for the reliable operation of the smart grid. These energy services will be provided through an open, modular data analysis toolbox and deployment of a generic data format for a data lake. In this project, the data coming from the diverse energy domain sources will be put at the disposal of advance energy service developers through the marketplace and, on the other hand, new services will be offered through the marketplace to the different energy actors. The architecture of BD4OPEM is based on the Smart Grid Architectural Model (SGAM), a reference for development, model and tools for Smart Grid Information Security, created by the Smart Grid - Coordination Group (SG-CG)1. [1].

Written by Ying Xu, Inalvis Alvarez-Fernandez, Zhihua Qu, and Wei Sun

University of Central Florida

The open source Distribution System Simulator, OpenDSS, is a comprehensive electrical power system simulation package for electric utility power distribution systems. It has two modes: sinusoidal steady-state simulation, and time series (or quasi steady-state) simulation. Both are very efficient and useful for many analyses. Multi-Agent OpenDSS, MA-OpenDSS, is built upon OpenDSS. The MA-OpenDSS incorporates an asynchronous, local, possibly varying communication architecture, enables a set of virtual nodes (called virtual leaders) to coordinate local data sharing and actions, includes programmable dynamic blocks for behaviors of distributed energy resources, and implements a host of distributed and cooperative algorithms of estimation, optimization and control, as shown in Figure 1. It is specifically developed to simulate and investigate self-organizing microgrids and large-scale electricity distribution networks with extremely high renewable penetrations. This article provides a summary of MA-OpenDSS main features and functionalities.

Written by Ramon Gallart Fernandez and Chloé Coral

Eco-bot project aims to utilize recent advances in chatbot tools and advanced signal processing (i.e. energy disaggregation) using low-resolution smart meter-type data with the goal of changing their behaviour towards energy efficiency. Eco-Bot targets to a personalized virtual energy assistant to deliver information on itemized (appliance-level) energy usage through a chat-bot tool. The "chat-bot" functionality will use an attractive frontend interface, permitting seamless communication in a more natural and interactive way than a traditional mobile application. This way, eco-bot aims to achieve a higher level of engagement with consumers than previous efforts (i.e. serious games, gamification, competitions or other interactive ICT), by adding a more engaging form of interaction with existing platforms that has been proven in different market settings.

A creation of an energy efficiency model is crucial for minimizing energy consumption through user engagement. This can be allowed by the design of targeted and highly personalized measures aimed to engage users towards a sustainable energy consumption. For this purpose, a new multi-component taxonomy of energy recipients for eco-bot’s behavioural model was created based on the results of the empirical research.

Written by Ashkan R. Kian

Artificial Intelligence (AI), distributed optimization (DO) algorithms with efficient consensus mechanisms among stake holder agents, and Blockchain based Transactive Energy platform (BCTE) seem to be the necessary SaaS/software tools to help variety of Smart Grid stake holders including ISO/TSO/IESO, PU, LDC, Microgrid and net-zero community developers and operators to efficiently and optimally monitor, control and trade energy (and A/S) with DER, DR and EV-fleet prosumers.


Past Issues

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IEEE Smart Grid Bulletin Editors

IEEE Smart Grid Bulletin Compendium

The IEEE Smart Grid Bulletin Compendium "Smart Grid: The Next Decade" is the first of its kind promotional compilation featuring 32 "best of the best" insightful articles from recent issues of the IEEE Smart Grid Bulletin and will be the go-to resource for industry professionals for years to come. Click here to read "Smart Grid: The Next Decade"