Smart Grid: Optimized Power Sharing and Energy Storage System Framework with Recent Trends and Future Ahead

Introduction

The global demand for the electrical energy has increased manifold since its invention with the development of modern society. The extensive interconnection between the grids to meet increasing demand & to improve the efficiency has resulted into complex structure of power system and its highly dynamic & unpredictable operation. The dependency on the depleting non renewable resources of the energy for generating electricity has raised the concern for security & reliability of supply in future. The existing power grid is operating under stressed condition with minimal safety margins as the amount of transportation of electrical power is increasing at rapid rate without significant addition in the grid infrastructure. The existing power system is designed to support centralized generation while its operation is limited to one way flow of energy & information and it hasn’t changed much in decades.

Growing complexities due to rapid connection of ever increasing loads & its variety has made the system to operate at poor efficiency & vulnerable to frequent failures & blackout. The connection of nonlinear loads to the grid is deteriorating the quality of power by inducing the harmonics in the supply. The pilferage of power is resulting into huge losses to utilities. The usage of non renewable energy resources for production of electricity has increased the carbon emission which is major cause for global warming. The limitations of conventional power system, increased competition due to deregulation & informed customers are posing numerous challenges to utilities & forcing them to change the mode of operation of existing electrical grid.

The Smart grid is the future of electrical power system as it offers solutions to the problems of conventional grid structure. The smart grid integrates the new technologies, extensive automation & harnesses the potential of information technology enabling the system to operate more efficiently & reliably. It allows the two way flow of information, data & energy between utility & customer and vice-versa. With the emphasis on the integration of renewable energy generating unit, electrical vehicles, smart homes, the necessity of smart grid has become indispensible need of the hour. The smart grid enables the effective usage of improved grid, enhances operating efficiency, security, resilience & make the grid self healing. This reduces the chances of the failure of the grid & hence reliability increases. Also it motivates the customers to participate actively in managing their load by providing them relevant data on real times basis. This offers overall economy on the part of the customer & ultimately improves the overall efficiency by matching the demand & supply.

The backbone of the smart grid is the intensive utilization of communication infrastructure in sharing the real time critical data among various utilities & customers for optimized usage of the grid. It automates the control & protection operation of the power system by replacing the existing relays & electromechanical protective devices with the smart sensors & intelligent electronics devices (IEDs) which are capable of communicating, fast, accurate & reliable in operation.

This chapter elaborates the basics of smart grid & its importance in modern time. It underlines the latest technologies included & challenges in the implementation of smart grid. It also briefly discusses the probable solutions for these problems. All the shortcomings in the traditional grid have been worked out and evolved a better grid system for fighting the challenges of present, which can be noticed in the Table 1(Joy Jeena, Jasmin E A, Rajan John Viju, 2013).