IEEE Electrification - September 2020 - 86

Participation of End Users
The smart grid concept was developed to cope with the
existing legacy distribution networks in a new era of integrating massive DERs for delivering cleaner energy and
responding to customers, which mandated more reliable
and resilient supplies. A smart grid delivers electricity
from suppliers to consumers using digital technology that
can control loads and home devices to save energy, reduce
cost, and increase reliability and transparency. In this
sense, an energy system becomes more interactive, intelligent, and distributed by offering a wide spectrum of solutions to emerging socioeconomic and technopolitical
issues. This paradigm shift will allow utility consumers to
perform as prosumers who are able to generate, store,
control, and manage a portion of the energy that will consume and offer their surplus power generation to their
local peers. This type of consumer and its peers will be
active players in the distribution grid operation.
In the era of smart grids, energy-efficient applications
enable building occupants to optimize their electricity
usage and minimize their energy costs with greater control granularity than ever before. Smart meters provide
detailed information on electricity-consumption profiles
and open the door to consumers to reshape their consumption habits. In the wake of having an extensive
grasp on consumption behavior, utility policy makers
can devise differentiated services (e.g., time-of-use rates
and real-time pricing) for harvesting the ramping flexibility from the demand side and flattening the net thermal load profile.
Meanwhile, ideally, smart meters enable power system
operators to track and guide customer participation in
envisaged demand-response programs. The seamless,
two-way communication between customer sites and
control centers guarantees the transparency of services
offered to customers. The implementation of dynamic

pricing mechanisms motivates electricity customers to
cut down on or alter their power consumption by lowering
their comfort level in response to the pricing incentives
provided through smart meters.

The Use of Information Technology

86

I E E E E l e c t r i f i cati o n M agaz ine / SEPTEMBER 2020

IoT-Enabled
IoT-Enabled
Hardware Devices Software Applications

Communication
and Control Functions

Among the multitude of state-of-the-art information technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) plays a pivotal role
in filling the gaps between control and monitoring applications and physical processes. Such processes are
adopted to meet the technical challenges resulting from
the widespread hosting of DERs by the legacy distribution network. The IoT is viewed as a collection of innovative technologies and initiatives that instill intelligence in
control and monitoring applications and link them to
interact with the physical power distribution system. It is
expected that the number of IoT devices connected to
the Internet will exceed one trillion by 2022, encompassing approximately 45% of all Internet traffic. The evolving
IoT technologies expand their potential applications to
benefit power distribution systems in various dimensions, which include the distributed generation, network
components, and demand side. For instance, a smart
meter is a sophisticated IoT device deployed by power
distribution utilities and third-party service providers to
build a thorough view of power generation, distribution,
and consumption postures.
Meanwhile, electricity customers exploit IoT technologies as proactive players in power distribution systems to
attain the benefits of demand-side participation. As IoT
technologies become more accessible and affordable, participating customers will continue to further utilize them
to amplify the utilities' observability and controllability
over local, renewable energy resources and individual consumption portfolios in a very granular fashion. Given the
ubiquitous connection of smart things (potentially
through high-speed telecommunications and powerful cloud services), a customer can conveniently
and flexibly adjust settings on
Management
Configuration
home devices (e.g., washers/dryers,
Verification
Control
electric water heaters, lighting, air
Monitoring
Monitoring
Application
conditioning, electric vehicle (EV)
Layer
SDN
Power
charging, and pool pumps) for
demand response using their wireless home network. Notably, smart
SDN
home applications of the IoT can
Control Layer
extensively escalate customer
capabilities and enthusiasm to
Communication
optimize energy consumption in
Component Layer
response to dynamic electricity
rates with convenient and readily
Power
available tools (e.g., phones, tablets,
Component Layer
and smart watches).
As displayed in Figure 7, the varFigure 8. An SDN-based communication and control architecture.
ious physical components for
IEEE Electrification - September 2020

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