Smart

29th May
Distributed
Power
Generation 2010
Networks
Research
A review of current research in the field of Smart Grids using distributed power
generation and a vision of the future of the power transmission networks. based
Futurology

Cheng-Che Chen
cc17e09@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Submitted by:
Eakan Gopalakrishnan
eg5g09@ecs.soton.ac.uk
 Table of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................................................................... 2
1.1 History of Power Generation .............................................................................................................................................................. 2
1.2 A Definition: Distributed Generation ................................................................................................................................................. 2
1.3 Driving Forces.................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
2. Smart Grid ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
2.1 Renewable Resources and Reliability ................................................................................................................................................ 4
2.2 Demand Response .............................................................................................................................................................................. 4
2.3 Storage Devices .................................................................................................................................................................................. 4
2.4 IT infrastructure for Smart Grid ......................................................................................................................................................... 5
3. Benefits of Distributed Generation ......................................................................................................................................................... 5
4. Agent based Control in Smart Grid ......................................................................................................................................................... 6
4.1 PowerMatcher: MA Control System .................................................................................................................................................. 6
4.2 IDAP Systems .................................................................................................................................................................................... 7
4.3 GMS Systems ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 8
5. Demonstration: Future Grid .................................................................................................................................................................... 8
6. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 10
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..................................................................................................................................................................... 10
8. REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 10

Table of Figures
Figure 1 Traditional (left) and future (right) electricity networks (courtesy ISET) .......................................................................................... 3
Figure 2 Example Variability of Wind Energy ................................................................................................................................................. 4
Figure 3 Setup of CRISP supply and demand (CRISP final summary report).................................................................................................. 7
Figure 4 Electronic Market simulation demonstrating reduced fluctuation and power import reduction (CRISP final summary report) ........ 7
Figure 5 IDAPS MAS Collaborative Diagram ................................................................................................................................................. 7
Figure 6 Architecture of Grid Monitoring and Management System................................................................................................................ 8
Figure 7 Smart Distributed Power Generation Grid ......................................................................................................................................... 9

1
 Smart Distributed Power Generation Networks of
Tomorrow
Cheng-Che Chen
School of Electronics and Computer Science,
University of Southampton
cc17e09@ecs.soton.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
In the beginning, electricity was generated and distributed
in a very small area, closest to the source, which is how it is
in a distributed power generation grid. Then as technology
developed and the transmission properties of AC was
discovered, the scale of transmission increased and thus
people began to focus on centralized power generation and
large scale distribution. Then again recently after the
discovery of High voltage DC and its transmission
efficiencies, in the past decade, the focus shifted to
decentralized power distribution grids. The focus on
renewable energy resources also could be attributed to the
increased interest in distributed power generation systems.
In this paper, we take a look at the current technologies and
progress that has happened in the smart distributed
generation grids and predict the features and convenience
promised by the smart grids of tomorrow. We also take a
look at the challenges that lie ahead in shifting towards such
an intelligent smart grid from the conventional grid.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
A.1 [Introductory and Survey]: Distributed Power
Generation and Smart Grids.
J.7 [Computers in Other Systems]: Command and Control
General Terms
Management, Measurement, Performance, Design,
Reliability, Experimentation, Security.
Keywords
Distributed Generation Systems, Distributed Computing.
1. INTRODUCTION
Electricity today, is something that we cannot live without.
It has been reaching homes through large scale distribution
systems, where power travels a long distance from the
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Conference’10, Month 1–2, 2010, City, State, Country.
Copyright 2010 ACM 1-58113-000-0/00/0010…$10.00.
Eakan Gopalakrishnan
School of Electronics and Computer Science,
University of Southampton,
eg5g09@ecs.soton.ac.uk
source of production, that usually resides somewhere far
away from residential areas, to reduce the harmful effects of
pollution in the neighbourhood. This is a centralized power
generation and distribution system. A smart grid delivers
electricity from suppliers to consumers using two way
digital technologies to control appliances at consumer’s
home to save energy, reduce cost, increase reliability and
transparency.
The concept of distributed power generation and smart
grids would hold very well with renewable energy resources
thereby paving a greener way of electricity generation and
distribution.
1.1 History of Power Generation
During the early days, when electricity was first transmitted,
it was available to only sites close to the source of
generation. The first grids were based on direct current,
therefore the supply voltage was limited and also the
distance across which it could be transmitted. Demand and
supply were balanced using storage like batteries which
could be directly coupled to the grid [12] [13]. After the
discovery of alternating current and learning that it could be
transmitted at very low costs across great distances by
raising and lowering voltage using power transformers was
what led to the centralized grid system of power
distribution. [12] During the last decade, the interest in
distributed generation suddenly increased again [11].
1.2 A Definition: Distributed Generation
When it comes to defining distributed generation, there
seems to be no consensus on a common definition [13] [11]
[14]. Different countries have different definitions; some of
them define it based on the voltage level used for
transmission, whereas others define it based on the fact that
distributed generation is connected to circuits from which
consumer loads are supplied directly, without any other
intervention. Sometimes DG is also defined based on some
characteristics like renewable energy source usage,
cogeneration etc, some definitions also include large-scale
cogeneration systems as distributed generation systems,
whereas others put emphasis on small-scale generation
units. But all these definitions consider small scale
2
generation units connected to a distribution grid as a part of
distributed generation system.
Therefore to reach a unified definition several factors were
examined in [14] like purpose, capacity, location, power
delivery area, technology, environmental impact, mode of
operation etc. Thus now the widely accepted definition is as
follows: “Distributed Generation is an electric power source
connected directly to the distribution network or on the
customer site of the meter”.
But the above definition does not give the rating of the
generation source. Distributed generation systems are also
classified based on the power rating.
1.3 Driving Forces
In [26] [22] [23] the driving forces behind the penetration
of distributed generation are listed out clearly. Summarizing
them below:
• Environmental concerns: green or sustainable energy
generation is possible and is best suited for a
distributed generation system on small scales.
• Deregulation of electricity market: deregulation has
caused uncertainty in the long term prospects of
investments in power generation and this has caused an
interest in small scale distributed generation.
• Diversification of energy resources: This is done to
reduce dependency on fossil fuels for energy.
• Energy autonomy: a sufficient production capacity in a
local network opens the possibility of intentional
islanding, which is the transition to stand alone
operation during abnormal conditions on the externally
connected network.
• Energy efficiency: Distributed power generation would
reduce transmission loss. Higher efficiency can be
attained by using combined heat power generation
instead of traditional furnace burners.
Figure 1 Traditional (left) and future (right) electricity
networks (courtesy ISET)
The figure shows that in the future a considerable amount
of energy that is generated on a small scale would be fed
into the network at medium and low-voltage sub-networks.
[23] predicts that the growing share of distributed
generation in the electricity generation and distribution
segment may evolve in three different stages:
• Accommodation Stage: Distributed units would run
free while centralized control still exists.
• Decentralization Stage: DG share increases, virtual
utilities control power transmission, but centralized
control still exists.
• Dispersal Stage: DG takes over market, low voltage
network segments provide their own supply of limited
energy, and central network operators become more
like co-ordinators.
2. Smart Grid
The current power distribution system is not smart enough
to do many things that would be required to be done if
distributed generation gets popular and is widely used
everywhere around the world. If that was the case, we
would see houses being self sufficient in terms of its energy
needs and excess energy generated could be stored or be
traded.
Currently need for energy is rising rapidly and villages and
rural areas are being urbanized, which again increases the
need of larger amounts of electricity. Natural resources are
being scarce and hard to find for electricity generation
using conventional methods. Climate change and global
warming has made us more environmentally conscious. The
markets today are open to any kind of trade, which would
open up new possibilities in distributed generation grids
[51].
“Smart grid” is generally used to describe the integration of
elements connected to the electrical distribution grid with
an information technology infrastructure so that it can
provide several benefits to both the providers and
consumers of electricity [5]. The ability of a utility to create
ubiquitous connectivity between all of its current data
sources and decision-making points is critical to the success
of smart grid. The goal of going towards a smart grid is to
increase the use of renewable energy resources for power
generation. And the sudden increase in the power
requirements has to be met by increasing capacity and by
reducing transmission loss over long distance. Congested
areas or areas with very high population densities can be
powered using distributed generation and related
technologies. By meeting all these requirements we would
have a reliable, flexible and secure power distribution Grid.
Some of the widely anticipated features addressed by
having a smart grid are listed as follows:
3
• Integrating new ways of power generation including
wind, solar, etc and wise utilization of stored energy.
• High quality of service without any interruption, free of
voltage spikes or sags.
• Real-time communication between consumer and
utility so that users can tailor their energy consumption
based on factors like price, environmental concerns etc.
• Resilience against attacks and theft.
• Better energy utilization efficiency.
• Autonomous control over transmission ensuring
reliability without human interference in case of faults
or natural disasters.
The efforts towards the development of smart grids has
increased recently due to the reforms in policy and
regulations [35] [36] [37] [38] [39]. The efforts can be
broadly classified as:
• Reliability
• Renewable resources
• Demand response
• Electric storage
• Electricity transportation
Of the list given above, reliability is of prime importance.
Renewable resources when used for electricity generation
are notorious for its volatility; therefore reliability becomes
an issue there as well. This is addressed by demand
response and electric storage and it also addresses the
economics of the grid.
2.1 Renewable Resources and Reliability
Some of the most rapidly expanding renewable resources
are expected to be wind and solar energy. In US, wind
energy production is expected to grow from 31TWh in
2008 to 1160TWh by 2030 [40]. But the unpredictability of
wind energy is indicated by its low capacity factor which is
much lower than conventional energy generation [41].
Figure 2 Example Variability of Wind Energy
Wind power forecasting errors also present scheduling
problems, and these errors could be in excess of 25% [42].
Wind generators also pose problems like Low Voltage Ride
Through. Even then this variability has relatively small
impact on the regulation requirements [43].
Solar energy is very abundant but almost completely un-
utilized by us. The variability of solar energy is impacted by
sunlight availability and climate and the capacity factor for
photovoltaic cells are around 10-20%. For solar thermal
plants this may reach up to 70% with storage [44].
The factors that affect the reliability of energy from
renewable resources are:
• Variability and low capacity
• Low correlation with the load profile
• Relatively high forecast errors
• Congestion issues at transmission level and distribution
level.
• Operational issues like voltage regulation.
2.2 Demand Response
Demand response helps reduce consumer load in response
to emergency and high-price conditions. Normal demand-
response in the range of 5-15% of system peak load can
help in reducing the need for additional resources and
lowering real-time electricity prices [45]. Load rejection is
one technique of protecting the grid from disruption. It used
to operate through under-voltage or under-frequency relays.
Such techniques can be adopted into a smart grid to make it
more intelligent based on customer participation.
This can be implemented through either automatic or
manual response to price signals or through a bidding
process based on communication between consumer and
market/system operator through local utilities.
Load balancing of the energy demand has really great
industrial value, since this can avoid costly and sometimes
environment unfriendly generation of energy to meet peak
demands. In addition to this, the investments in expensive
power generation and distribution equipment to take care of
peak demand can be brought down. A win-win situation for
utilities and customers can be attained by trading energy
allocation vs. price or customer value, thus agreeing on a
suitable redistribution profitable for all parties [5].
2.3 Storage Devices
Improvements in electricity storage technology have helped
make distributed generation effective. Such resources make
the net demand profile flatter reducing the fluctuations and
improve reliability and are fast. It helps to alleviate
congestion at both transmission and distribution levels.
4
2.4 IT infrastructure for Smart Grid
IT infrastructure for the smart grid should be responsible
for providing fail proof, fast bidirectional communication
among all devices connected to the grid to enable grid wide
control by means of something like the World Wide Web,
so that a user can customize his power usage, and
distributors can regulate their distribution and also monitor
the usage and provide live feeds of usage. But all this
requires extensive use of modern technology based on the
following:
• Utilize advanced power management utilities for faster
and accurate grid-wide situational awareness.
• Faster and robust control devices to enable fast
automated control actions.
• Embedded and intelligent devices, that implements
fault diagnosis, automated restoration etc.
• Secure communications
• Computing capabilities for reliable analyses, agent
based self co-ordinated system [46].
Thus the features that an ideal Information and
Communication Technologies infrastructure that would be
instrumental in shaping the energy networks of the future
would be
1. Providing universal connectivity.
2. Increasing the intelligence of the grid.
3. Making the critical infrastructures of ICT and power
work together.
Project CRISP has produced a range of useful insights,
innovative methods, and pioneering application concerning
how ICT can help realize the smart power network of the
future. Here are some of the key findings [6] summarized:
1. ICT technologies including internet and web standards
currently have the capability to cater for many of the
future energy networks’s functionalities though the all
the benefits have not been reaped yet.
2. Software agents in the grid enable decentralized
control of power networks, and make the grid
“intelligent” and “self organizing”.
3. Agents in grid architectures are able to carry out
advanced fault detection and handling functions with
the help of advanced electrical devices.
4. Automatic supply-demand matching by local electronic
power markets in commercial Distributed Energy
Resource clusters decreases power import from other
parts of the grid, fluctuations in production and
consumption.
5. Under-voltage becomes a good grid stability indicator
that can be used in critical situations and this would
mean intelligent load shedding.
6. Real-time performance requirements of ICT network
systems can be fulfilled by properly configuring the
embedded ICT in a Service Oriented Architecture by
using existing protocols.
7. A lot of research and technology development is
required to act on issues related to interfacing,
integrating and protecting power systems interlinked
with ICT information systems in a robust and
standardized way.
8. A great deal of attention must be paid on the methods
used to align the new ICT technologies, internet/web
standards, and grid architectures, with emerging new
business and service models in the European market
environment.
3. Benefits of Distributed Generation
Big isn’t always better. The big plants hit imposing
economic, physical and regulatory barriers, so by 2000 the
average new plant was around 100 megawatts (MW) [7] [8]
[34]. Approximately 60000MW of small-scale distributed
generators, defined as less than 10 MW are online in North
America [9]. These are mostly diesel generators, but now
micro-turbines, fuel-cells and solar arrays are finding
increasing market.
Some of the benefits of using distributed generation are
• Combined heat and power plants which ensure very
high efficiency.
• Standby/emergency generation which enhances
reliability.
• Peak shaving that ensure distributed generation is used
to meet peak demands for power.
• Grid support that ensure lesser grid loss, saving at least
10 – 15%
• Grid investment reduced: install Distributed generation
instead of extending grids. Green energy sources could
be used extensively.
According to [47] [48], the renewable electricity
contribution in 2010 range from 9.3% for UK and 10.3%
for Germany up to values of 21.5%for Portugal or 29.0%
for Denmark (all values excluding large hydro). Incentive
programs have been launched to support DG, not only for
the well publicised wind technologies, but also for example
PV installations [49].
Some examples of how consumers have used distributed
generation [50] and how their situation has improved:
5
• A bank installed a fuel cell to avoid power disturbances
that were shutting down its computer systems — the
purchase was about the cost of a 1h outage.
• A restaurant in Chicago using natural gas powered
micro turbine cuts 1500 off its monthly power bill
while improving power reliability.
• A police station installed a fuel cell, saving around
US$200000 over the cost of a line upgrade.
Conventional electricity generation in the US is the leading
source of green house gas emission, 34% [10]. And with a
smarter grid we’ll have more efficient distribution thereby
reducing the un-necessary demand for power and reducing
emissions from plants. If all the waste heat energy for
propelling heating and cooling systems, efficiencies of
fossil fuel powered distributed systems go up to 80%,
which is far better than that of big power plants.
Other benefits are that it can guarantee secure and reliable
power supply in case natural disasters [7]. Grid stability
would be the responsibility of several software agents and
thus the grid of the future would exhibit an adaptive nature.
4. Agent based Control in Smart Grid
As distributed generation will slowly replace centralized
generation, centralized control over the grid will be slowly
replaced by distributed control. Multi-agent systems and
virtual markets provide the key technology to meet the
requirements of the smart grid. Some of the reasons of why
a multi-agent based system should be used:
• MAS are much suitable for building distributed co-
ordination systems, as it allows several actors to act
together in competition or co-operation. There may be
local agents or other agents, in different roles, to take
care of the sub network and the main grid.
• MAS implements distributed decision making systems,
in an open, flexible and extensive way.
• MAS and micro-economics together open the
possibility of distributed co-ordination to exceed
boundaries of ownership.
• Virtual market will result in a Paretto-efficient system
which is a system that optimizes in the global level and
at local level, interests of individuals are balanced.
In [11] some of the applications of agent based control
schemes are listed as follows:
• Intelligent protection
• Agents in power market
• Supply demand matching
• Intelligent load shedding
• Autonomous electricity grid (AEG)
An AEG is a voltage net with a decent amount of
Distributed Generation installed that is self-regulating and
possibly able to continue operating, if necessary in a
degraded way, when it is disconnected from the grid.
In power systems MAS have a wide variety of applications
like power system disturbance diagnosis [24] [26] [27],
power system restoration [28], power system secondary
voltage control [29], and power system visualization [30].
The use of MAS to control micro-grids that consists of PV
generators, batteries and controllable loads have been
discussed in [31] [32] [33].
In the following subsections, we take a look at some
approaches of solving distributed power distribution control
over the grid which we feel combines features that would be
best suited for our vision of the future smart distributed
power grid.
4.1 PowerMatcher: MA Control System
In a market-based control, a large number of agents are
competitively negotiating and trading on an electronic
market, with the purpose of optimally achieving their local
control action goals [1]. Most of the early research was
aimed at climate control in office buildings with many
office rooms [18] [19] [20] [21].
A systems-level theory of large-scale intelligent and
distributed control was formulated [15] [16], that unifies
microeconomics and control theory in a multi-agent theory.
The result of this mixing was the derivation of a general
market theorem that proves two important properties about
agent-based microeconomics control:
• Computational economies with dynamic pricing
techniques are capable of dealing with scarce resources
for control, in an adaptive way that is optimal both
locally and globally.
• In the absence of resource constraints the system acts
as collection of local independent controllers that
behave in accordance with conventional control
engineering theory.
6

Figure 3 Setup of CRISP supply and demand (CRISP final
summary report).
Resource allocation in energy management systems is
called flow allocation. Such techniques can be found in
[17]. Supply and demand matching can be done using
several agents, where every device is represented as an
agent. Such a system has been developed and tested in [1].
A field experiment was conducted in Netherlands and some
Scandinavian countries. The test was done as a part of the
European Union funded Critical Infrastructures for
Sustainable Power (CRISP) project.
Figure 4 Electronic Market simulation demonstrating reduced
fluctuation and power import reduction (CRISP final
summary report)
The objective of the test was real time monitoring and
control of electricity supply and demand. Secondary aim
was to test the ICT elements needed for the implementation.
The results demonstrated in [6] show that fluctuations and
power import was reduced.
4.2 IDAP Systems
IDAPS stands for Intelligent Distributed Autonomous
Power System which was a concept proposed by Advanced
Research Institute of Virginia Tech [25]. IDAPS’ general
operation mode comprises of “normal operation” and
“outage mode operation”. During the former IDAPS runs as
a part of the local utility, coordinates internal loads and
distributed energy resources for the most optimal operation.
In case of an outage from the upstream, the IDAPS control
architecture is designed to isolate the IDAPS grid from the
local grid.
It uses broadly 4 types of agents,
• Control Agent: monitors system voltage and frequency
to diagnose contingency situations
• DER Agent: stores associated DER information,
connect/disconnect status.
• User Agent: Acts as a customer gateway that makes
features of an IDAPS micro-grid accessible to users
• Database Agent: responsible for storing system
information.
The system developed on ZEUS framework and uses
Ontologies for agent communication.
The following section explains the working of IDAPS as
mentioned in [17].
The initialization of the IDAPS multi-agent system is
performed by the control agent, the DER agent and the user
agent notifying the database agent of their presence. This
includes:
Figure 5 IDAPS MAS Collaborative Diagram
7
(i) All the agents notify the name server of their names
and IP addresses; the name server then updates its
database and fulfils the required procedure for agent
registration (1-3);
(ii) All agents notify the facilitator of their abilities; the
facilitator then fills its database with information
regarding abilities of agents (4-7). After the
initialization process, the user agent and the DER agent
register with its associated control agent (10-11). The
control agent responds to the registration requests (12-
13).
With respect to the interaction of agents with their
environments, the control agent receives measurements
from the main grid and publishes that information to its
registered agents (14-15). If the upstream outage is
detected, the control agent sends out a control signal to the
main circuit breaker (16). The user agent receives power
requirement information from the loads and sends
command to the DER agent (17, 18). On the other hand, the
DER agent receives power production information from the
DER and sends out this information to the user agent (19,
20). The user agent and the DER agent react to their
environments (21, 22) according to rules predetermined by
a user. The visualizer collects any copy of messages being
exchanged among all agents (8-9) so that they can be
further displayed.
4.3 GMS Systems
Figure 6 Architecture of Grid Monitoring and Management
System
Grid Management System [GMS] was developed by NASA
to help managing and monitoring the resources in
distributed power grids. This system is designed to ensure
the large number of services and resource in computational
grids is executed correctly and to arrange the processes that
are available on grids. Figure 1 shows the architecture of
this system. This system could be described in following
components [17].
1. GRAM Management agent: Globus Resource
Allocation Manager (GRAM) allows users to execute
applications remotely on a computer system [2] [4].
2. GIS Management agent: Grid Information Service
(GIS) is the databases allocated in computational grids,
containing information that regarding the service,
resource, users and applications [3] [2].
3. Event Archive: The event archive is the place where
stores events occurred in past for management GUIs to
get information about incorrect operations
4. Directory Service: For register services, help every
component can find each other.
5. Management GUI: A graphical user interface for gird
administrators and managers. Users can start or stop
any instances at any time according to their
requirements.
By using this grid manage system, users can quickly know
the currently status of grids and the networks. Furthermore,
it becomes much easier for administrators to perform tasks,
and manager users in the grids among remote systems.
5. Demonstration: Future Grid
To explain our vision of the future of distributed power
generation grids we built a flash based demonstration. It is a
simple animation of different scenarios that could be
possible in the future, depending on different weather
conditions, how renewable resources could be used to
generate energy and how the power generated is consumed,
stored and shared or sold among the houses in the grid.
Here we use only three modes of distributed power
generation for the demonstration.
• Using Solar energy
• Using Wind energy
• Using Hydro-power
The demonstration shows scenarios like:
• On sunny days, solar energy could be used to power
the house or group of houses.
• On cloudy days the houses that use solar energy
generation could borrow electricity from the grid.
• On windy days, wind energy could be used to power
the house that uses wind energy generation.
• On days in which the winds aren’t strong, the houses
using wind energy could borrow electricity from the
grid.
• Similarly houses near a river could use the river’s flow
to turn its turbines and generate power.
• Probably if the river dried up or when there is no flow,
the houses generating hydro-electric power could
borrow electricity from the grid.
• And finally a scenario in which all the sources are
running perfectly, very least likely to happen though. In
8
 such a case, there will be active contribution from all
the independent sources towards the grid.
The development of technology in electronic power
controllers, distributed power technology and smart grids,
which would have the intelligence and reasoning ability and
seamless integration with the latest in web technologies
probably with semantically linked data, would lead to a grid
like the one shown in the diagram.
Figure 7 Smart Distributed Power Generation Grid
Our vision of the future of the grid is a completely
automated power exchange grid, built over an agent based
ICT framework in which different houses or communities
will be generating energy using different energy sources
and they will all be connected to a grid through which they
can trade electricity. The grid would be intelligent and
would be controlled by agents distributed over the network
as explained in sections 4.
In Figure 7, the houses generate power using green,
renewable resources of energy whenever it is possible. For
example, solar energy generation in sufficient amounts is
possible only on sunny days; wind energy generation have
the same problems as solar energy. There is also a small
hydro power station on the house that is located near the
river that uses a small turbine to generate power using the
flowing water in the river. These houses store the energy
they have generated in cells. When the cells are completely
charged, and when there is excess of energy for the use of
one particular house that is generating it, the agents
assigned to that house is notified and it takes decision of
whether the stored power should be sold or consumed by
the devices at home based on weather forecasts and other
factors.
The agents could provide a service of power distribution
and distribute the excess power through the same grid. This
is where the technology has to develop. For real time power
transmission as and when required. Since distributed
generation is meant for small scale purposes, this is very
much possible.
Today we use the internet for data sharing and doing e-
business. Likewise, this grid would trade power. When a
community or a house has generated excess amount of
energy than it actually requires at that time, the agent
controller of that house would give the owner or owners a
choice of whether the excess power is to be stored and used
for their own purpose or it is to be sold out to the grid.
Power would be transmitted and charged on a pro-rata
basis, i.e. on a per unit basis. The neighbour or any user of
power would pay the provider house for the amount of
energy they use. This could be compared with today’s
internet where data download is charged this way. But this
would require sophisticated electronic components, power
controllers and meters that would do the real time
conversion and monitoring of power usage and transfer of
the required data for power usage calculation between the
agents who are trading power.
Power providers could use an auction based system for the
purpose of power distribution and allocation. Like how
agents are used in trading systems like the sponsored
search. One provider could give power at a particular rate
which is convenient for them. This would ensure good
competition and keep prices affordable and give consumers
of power the choice of using power from the cheapest
provider.
The issue of trust and quality matters here, because
someone who has been providing low quality, unstable
power should have to be penalized or cut off automatically
by the consumer agent. The advantage of the system is the
flexibility to the user. In case the power being bought is not
stable, the agent may wish to stop using that and switch
over to another provider by taking part in another auction.
The beauty of such a system lies in the fact that the people
who live there would know little about the negotiation
going on for the power that they use. A complete
abstraction of the whole buying and selling process is
possible only because of a powerful multi agent based
power grid.
Research is going on to create intelligent home appliances.
And the devices of the future would have the ability to
communicate and interact online. Such devices when
connected to a grid like this could completely revolutionize
the way people use power and give them complete control.
Smarter grid and appliances in the house would enable
smart use of energy, thereby making the house a greener
place to live in. Technologies like Ambient Intelligence is
not far away and will help the devices communicate with
each other for energy needs and other requirements.
The development of agent based web services would play a
crucial role. Service discovery and automated selection of
appropriate service and in case new power generator is
installed at a house then service composition would also be
9
done accordingly. Thus if a house or building society is
completely self sufficient in its energy needs, by the use of
several different methods of power generation then it can
offer a choice of service. If the heat generated during
generation is used for other purposes in again a distributed
manner then the grid would become even more efficient.
There would be a convergence of different technologies at
different levels to bring about such a system.
To summarize the future of the Smart power grid based on
agents:
• It would help in power control, transmission,
stabilizing, etc.
• It would help in trading and monitoring power without
interruptions.
• Completely autonomous and little or no human
intervention for operation.
• Research required for the security protocols of such a
system, though it is internet based, integrating it with
power grid may bring about other risks.
• New rules and laws would be required for regulating
power sales to maintain healthy power market free
from adulteration.
• Seamless disaster management because a disaster that
affects a few houses or one such distributed power
station, will not hamper the power transmission
through other parts of the grid.
• Faults in the grid could be monitored online by
measurements done by sophisticated devices that send
regular feeds to the agent.
6. Conclusion
After looking at the advancements in technology related to
power generation and power control there is a very high
possibility of a shift from large scale centralized power
distribution systems to small scale. The prices of photo
voltaic cells have also been going down, thereby
encouraging people to buy and set up their own solar power
generators and as such products become common and
available in abundance, they’ll be like the computers in the
nineties; everyone will want to have one. This would
probably lead to a complete replacement of the centralized
system with small scale distributed systems.
The awareness of the environmental benefits of using
renewable resources for energy generation would drive
more people to accept this system. Thus we hope to see a
greener, smarter, energy self sufficient, efficient and nature
friendly planet.
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Our sincere thanks to Professor David De Roure for
allowing us to choose a topic like Smart Distributed Power
Generation which is quite different from the normal
computer science topics for distributed systems. This gave
us a good learning experience, reading new things about
energy, distribution and efficiency which we had never
done before, and also gave us a chance to test our skills on
flash development for building the demonstration which
was done during the presentation.
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