IT-Enabled Integration of Renewables: A Concept for the Smart Power Grid
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Review Article IT-Enabled Integration of Renewables: A Concept for the Smart Power Grid Friederich Kupzog,1 Thilo Sauter,2 and Klaus Pollhammer1 1 Institute 2 Institute
of Computer Technology, Vienna University of Technology, 27-29 Gußhaus Straße, 1040 Vienna, Austria for Integrated Sensor Systems, Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2 Viktor Kaplan Straße, 2700 Wiener Neustadt, Austria
Correspondence should be addressed to Friederich Kupzog, [email protected] Received 1 July 2010; Accepted 8 September 2010 Academic Editor: Seung Ho Hong Copyright © 2011 Friederich Kupzog et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The wide utilisation of information and communication technologies is hoped to enable a more efficient and sustainable operation of electric power grids. This paper analyses the benefits of smart power grids for the integration of renewable energy resources into the existing grid infrastructure. Therefore, the concept of a smart power grid is analysed, and it is shown that it covers more than for example, time-of-use energy tariffs. Further, the communication technologies used for smart grids are discussed, and the challenge of interoperability between the smart grid itself and its active contributors such as functional buildings is shown. A significant share of electrical energy demand is and will be constituted by large functional buildings that are mostly equipped with automation systems and therefore enable a relatively simple IT integration into smart grids. This large potential of thermal storages and flexible consumption processes might be a future key to match demand and supply under the presence of a high share of fluctuating generation from renewables.
1. Introduction Strong drivers are working towards more information and communication technology in the power grids. On the electrical engineering side, efficient components and generation from renewable energy resources are the most important ones. On the IT side, the introduction of an automation infrastructure, so to say a “fieldbus for energy grids”, is of high importance. Of course, information technology is not an end in itself in this context, but a means for more efficient, sustainable, and cost-effective provision of electrical energy and ancillary (i.e., supporting) services. The vision of the future power grid with an increased level in utilization of information technology is that of a “smart grid”. The term “smart grid” or “smart electricity grid” is promoted by the European technology platform of the same name, which is formed by many stakeholders in this area. Similar activities are ongoing in the US and Japan (see http://www.smartgrids.eu/, visited 12/2008). The key difference between the state-of-the-art power grids and future smart grids is that the latter will strongly
rely on information and communication technology, which enables a seamless coordination of
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