Page 70 - From Smart Grid to Internet of Energy

56 From smart grid to internet of energy

for monitoring and control of objects, namely things, used in daily life. The inte-
gration of smart grid and IoT presents another description of IoE or Energy
Internet (EI) provides to achieve broader connectivity by including cloud com-
puting and big data management technologies. The internet communication
improves smart grid applications providing interaction of various ICT and com-
munication interfaces to be used in association. Moreover, M2M communica-
tion opportunities enable decentralized control and monitoring features for
smart grid control systems [45]. EI presents remarkable differences according
to current infrastructures in terms of transmission systems, decentralized energy
exchange, energy router interaction at distribution nodes, large-scale integra-
tion of DERs, and diverse generator types directly connecting to utility grid
without converter requirement. The EI provides widespread energy exchange
in different types since it uses electrical energy as an intermediate for transmis-
sion. The energy routers interact with several DG connections, relays and reclo-
sers to control energy transformation between islanded microgrids and utility
grid. On the other hand, energy routers ensure fault detection and protection
schemes due to its fast and accurate measurement capabilities. The increased
interest on DG and Res integration to utility grid has fostered development
of EI concept. China targets to cover around 30% of energy demand from RESs
and discussed to increase this rate over 50% in near future for distribution
system. In the EU, Germany embraces an aggressive policy to increase its
RES share to 30% up to 2020 and to 50% by 2030 while United Kingdom sets
a rate around 20% for RESs. The share of RESs in generation cycle is increased
up to 30% in United States where California aims to reach 33% in a few
years [46].
The recent trends in IoT communications have promoted EI developments
by low-cost and efficient devices with lower power consumption as a next step.
The communication technologies of smart grid is enriched with the use of web-
based internet services that brought reliable connectivity between various
devices. In addition to devices, internet protocols are also emerged regarding
to requirements of residential and industrial smart grid applications. The novel
IP and TCP based protocols such as IPv6 and IPv6 over low power WPAN
(6LoWPAN) have been replaced with legacy ZigBee technologies using IEEE
802.15.4. on the other hand, the use of building automation and control net-
works (BACnet) have been widespread with the development of HEMS and
residential monitoring and control systems. The 6LoWPAN is improved to
increase system security of IEEE 802.15.4 based networks. It uses mesh topol-
ogy to provide extensive scalability that is depended to routing protocols. The
mesh network topology provides self-healing ability to the network if network
traffic quickly increases and link is broken [45].
An illustration of EI infrastructure is presented in Fig. 1.17 including DER
and RESs in addition to conventional bulk generation plants, residential and
industrial loads producing energy demand, control center interacting with other
sections of infrastructure, smart MDMS center managing metering and