Smart grid

The smart grid is the state-­‐of-­‐the-­‐art technology for electrical system that can sensibly execute the operations to all interconnected elements -­‐ from generator to consumers. Smart grid simply converts the conventional power grid towards the modern grid in order to regulate sustainable, economic and reliable electricity (Massoud &Wollenberg, 2005 and Gellings, 2009). Smart grid intelligently executes operations from primary and secondary generators through the transmission and distribution network to the different types of consumers.

Artelys is an independent company specialised in optimization, decision support and modeling. The company supports an effective planning and implementation of the energy transition using state-of-art quantitative techniques including cost-benefit assessment, impact assessment, scenario building and development of a city-level energy/climate master plan.

Please refer to the following link https://www.artelys.com/reports/ for Aterlys reports and publications. 

Efficacitas Consulting was founded in 1994 with the mission to work for sustainable resource management throughout Latin America, providing consulting services in energy, environment and sustainable development. Efficacitas fulfils its mission with professional competence and ethics by providing technical assistance, driven by excellence and innovation, to companies, governmental and nongovernmental organizations involved in natural resource management and conservation.

The Global Environment Centre Foundation (GEC) is an entity that supports the UNEP’s International Environmental Technology Centre (IETC), based in Japan. GEC is dedicated to the transfer of environmentally sound technologies, in both developing countries and countries with economies in transition. The foundation aims to contribute to Japan’s international efforts on the environment, sharing project collaborations as well as promoting Japan’s rich conservation knowledge and experience in developing nations.

The ability to store and shift electrical power over time is becoming more important as economies increasingly adopt renewable power sources. Meshed AC power grids have limited controllability and cannot effectively handle congestion of key transmission lines during sporadic peaks and valleys of input power such as that produced by solar and wind sources. Conventional unified power flow controllers (UPFCs) mitigate the congestion problem by balancing the load across transmission lines but require expensive large transformers with high losses.

This technology provides a new radiation hardened latch design that is very SEU (single-event upset) and SET (single event transient effects) immune. Included is a master-slave flip-flop design based on the latch. The design uses substantially lower power (about 50%) than a conventional design when operating at a single power supply voltage.

This work analyses 39 smart city projects that have implemented smart grid technologies in order to make their electricity generation, distribution and consumption more sustainable and efficient. In this first report, six “lighthouse” cases are analyzed in detail. The lighthouse cases cover six smart grid themes: smart meters and AMI, demand-side management, customer engagement, grid automation, renewable energy and the budget of each project.

This paper outlines “the changing energy landscape and the manifold advantages smart grids entail for consumers, network operators, suppliers, renewable energy generators, new services providers, the environment and the economy.” Its three sections are titled (1) Increasing system flexibility: Balancing supply and demand by integrating distributed energy resources, (2) Lifting barriers: To the deployment of smart grids, and (3) Facilitating the market: How active DSOs will operate the smart grid.

This report provides practical guidance on how utilities can define their own smart grid vision, identify priorities and structure investment plans. While most of these strategic aspects apply to any area of the electricity grid, the document focuses on the segment of distribution. The guidance includes key building blocks that are needed to modernize the distribution grid and provides examples of grid modernization projects. Potential benefits that can be achieved (in monetary terms) for a given investment range are also discussed.

This working paper focuses on the potential role of electric vehicles (EVs) as a dispatchable, distributed energy storage resource to provide load shifting in a smart grid environment. The author proposes a method for simulating the potential benefits of using EVs in load shifting and V2G applications for four different regions—the United States, Western Europe, China and Japan—that are expected to have large numbers of EVs by 2050.