eSmart Systems together with key partners has participated in numerous research and demonstration projects in both Europe and the US. This and more than two decades of successful and extensive international IT and energy experience gives us the foundation to build the next generation smart grid solutions. Our view of a smarter grid (see figure 1) is to integrate flexible resources connected to the grid and let retailers, ESCO’s and DSO’s control their supply and demand based on market and price signals.
The idea is to control Prosumers that has the flexibility to both produce, consume and store electricity at short notice based on an optimal planning schedule. A Prosumer can for example be a cluster of residential homes with capacity to both consume and produce energy, or office buildings with the same characteristics. Smart Cities can also operate their load or local production based on the same interaction with the market and the real time operation of the underlying distribution grid.
“Internet of things” allows for greater control of the demand for electricity. In the US the notion of Demand Response is already well established. The idea is that end-users can register in a Demand Response program. The organizer of the Demand Response program will then help the end-user adjusting their power usage according to so-called Demand Response events. With internet-connected devices, the process can be automatic by sending demand response signals directly to devices and Home Automation Control systems, and end-users can select to opt out using smart phones or other internet enabled devices.
To get this to work participants in the energy market needs to test and demonstrate this Smart Grid interaction in live demo labs. With this, they can prove to DSOs, Retailers, ESCO and regulators that it is possible to buy and sell flexibility with different market mechanisms in interaction with DSO to balance the energy consumption. We believe that with smarter market models and economic incentives, it is possible to give tools to the retail market operators to design new and attractive market products that will benefit the whole energy ecosystem, and putting the Smart Grid to work!