Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Electric utilities worldwide are embracing a 'Smart Grid' vision of transformational change. This vision includes full modernization and automation of electric power networks. This vision also encompasses major elements from advanced metering, power electronics and information management to renewable and distributed energy resources, and home and electric vehicle energy management. The Smart Grid vision seeks to bring together and connect, in an inter-operable way, diverse technologies- advanced applications and use of distributed energy resources, communications, information management, automated controls. Doing so, the Smart Grid enables a self-healing, more reliable, less constrained, safer and more efficient grid. Intelligent meters, products and displays also empower customers to use electricity more efficiently. This research proposal seeks to bring together, for the first time, a collaborative effort in finding solutions to the pertinent issues arising in Smart grids not only from power systems viewpoint, or from a communications engineering viewpoint, or merely as an information management problem- but the three aspects merged and inter-twined because of the necessity of the day. A smart home energy management device needs communication channels with the individual controllable appliances but it cannot stand alone- it needs ""information"" from the external ""power system"" in terms of real-time market prices. Every such activity in Smart Grids are therefore linked between the three important pillars- the power system, the communication system, and the information system.