IEEE Electrification Magazine - March 2014 - 82

smart grids is needed. along these lines, the european commission cofunded the research project smarthouse/smartGrid (sh/sG) (see www.smarthouse-smartgrid.eu), a
consortium of leading parties in ict for energy, has adopted
an innovative approach. the ict architecture developed by
the consortium introduces a holistic concept and technology
for smart houses as they are situated and intelligently managed within their broader environment (see figure 1). the
approach treats smart homes and buildings as proactive customers (prosumers) that negotiate and collaborate as an
intelligent network in close interaction with their external
environment. context is king here: the smart home and
building environment includes a diversity of other units:
neighboring local energy consumers (other smart houses),
the local energy grid, associated available power and service
trading markets, as well as local producers [local environmentally friendly energy resources such as solar and (micro)
combined heat and power (chP)].
the architecture is based on a mixture of innovations
from recent r&d projects in the forefront of european
smart grids research. these innovations include:
xx
in-house energy management based on user feedback, real-time tariffs, intelligent control of appliances,
and provision of (technical and commercial) services
to grid operators and energy suppliers

xx
aggregation software architecture based on agent

technology for service delivery by clusters of smart
houses to wholesale market parties and grid operators
xx
usage of service-oriented architecture (soa) and
strong bidirectional coupling with the enterprise systems for system-level coordination goals and handling of real-time tariff metering data, etc.
the project capitalizes on several smart grid concepts
developed at different research institutes:
xx
the bidirectional energy management interface
(beMi) was developed at the fraunhofer institute for
Wind energy and energy system technology (iWes),
Germany.
xx
the multiagent intelligent control (MaGic) system
was developed at the Power system laboratory of the
national technical university of athens, Greece.
xx
PowerMatcher was developed at the energy research
center of the netherlands (ecn). [the PowerMatcher
team at ecn was recently taken over by the netherlands organization for applied scientific research
(tno).]
these three technologies were further developed
within the project, and synergies between the approaches were identified. they all share one control paradigm,
which can be summarized as:

Optimization Service
Internet

Legacy Providers

Marketplace

Auctions

Transaction Platform

Buy and Sell

Internet

Smart Meters

Future Service-Based
Energy Infrastructure

Internet

Internet

Home Appliances
Management

Figure 1. The service-based ecosystem based on smart houses and smart grids.

82

I E E E E l e c t r i f i c ati o n M agaz ine / MARCH 2014

Business
Intelligence

Alternative
Energy
Providers
http://www.smarthouse-smartgrid.eu
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Electrification Magazine - March 2014
