Page 72 - From Smart Grid to Internet of Energy

58 From smart grid to internet of energy

measurement system, and data management center providing data storage,
backup and data process. The energy routers illustrated in each section provide
communication and energy transmission throughout the entire system. The
energy exchange along different sections are also provided by interaction of
energy routers located at each subsection and centralized WAN section. The
control and data management sections facilitate operation of energy router
while smart MDMS provides required data to determine demand rates and oper-
ate DSM and DR programs. Since massive data stacks are generated by such a
system, data storage and management processes require artificial intelligence
based analysis methods and cloud computing type database management sys-
tems. The power network concept of an EI infrastructure is much more complex
and heterogenous comparing to regular smart grid applications. The efficient
and reliable energy management is ensured by energy routers that instantly
monitor and control generators, energy exchange rates, and consumption
data [47].
The key components of IoE, or namely EI, evolution are energy router, data
acquisition and data processing, and network technologies. The energy router is
core of the presented infrastructure in Fig. 1.17 where the generation, distribu-
tion, consumption and storage are combined in a complex system. Regardless of
generating plant type, energy router is responsible from two-way power
exchange along the diverse sources and loads. Therefore, the importance of
plug-and-play (PnP) systems are more significant to ensure high-quality power
transmission. In addition to these, efficient and secure energy management
tasks should be provided by energy routers. The energy router concept was
firstly proposed by North Carolina State University with Future Renewable
Electric Energy Delivery and Management (FREEDM) system. Later, several
other names such as energy hub, e-energy and digital grid router (DGR) have
been put forward, but energy router found a wide acceptance by major of com-
munity. The energy router is basically comprised by solid state transformer
(SST), distributed grid intelligence (DGI) software and communication inter-
face to interact with CPS.
Another featured energy router has been proposed by Swiss Federal Science
with the name of energy hub that is designed for energy conversion and storage
operations. The DGR term has been suggested by Japan researchers to define
energy router interacting with utility network and ICT interfaces. The DGR
is operated on IP based communication network connecting generators, con-
verters, RES and DERs with utility grid [47]. The contributions of EI to current
smart grid infrastructure have leveraged numerous achievements in terms of
power sources and communication technologies. Moreover, a wide variety of
DERs can be easily connected and adapted to CPS due to PnP and advanced
communication technologies used in EI environment. We describe EI concept
as Smart Grid 2.0 since that brings many improvements to existing smart grid
perspective. The detailed description of EI services and application in the
context of Smart Grid 2.0 are presented in the following section.