Intelligent DC Homes in Future Sustainable Energy Systems: When efficiency and intelligence work together

Abstract

The evidences that climate change is real, and the fact that it is most likely caused by human-related activities, has made the international community to considered a new energy model. Europe has led the initiative of moving away from fossil fuels to renewable energies, where other powerful countries, as USA and China, are lagging behind, and still highly rely on coal, gas and oil as a source of energy. Europe has set ambitious goals for 2020 regarding the increase of renewable energy production, energy efficiency, and greenhouse gas emission reduction. The concept of a microgrid is perfectly aligned with the new energy strategy. A microgrid easy the integration of renewable energy sources and energy storage systems at the consumption level, aiming to increase power quality, reliability and efficiency. On top of this, the increasing of DC-based loads has reopened the discussion of DC vs AC distribution systems. As a consequence a lot of research has been done on DC distribution systems and its potential for residential applications. Furthermore, the increasing presence and used of smart devices in homes, reveal a promising future for intelligent homes, integrated in the Internet of Things concept, where the residential electrical power systems works in cooperation with the smart devices, in order to achieve a smarter, more sustainable, and cleaner energy systems.

Review on Control of DC Microgrids

“…The solution of ED problem is actually the cost-minimized usage of the committed assets during a single period to meet the demand, while adhering to generator and transmission constraints. DC MGs, advantageous with nature interface to renewable energy and storage systems, are attracting research efforts for their future application in efficient buildings and homes [111]- [115]. A scheduling and coordination between RES, ESS and EV charging in an efficient building is presented in [111], where the optimal solution is essentially to find the proper time for absorbing grid power and charging EVs in order to minimize the operation cost.…”

“…As a consequence, an increasing number of academic research works and industrial demonstration projects on DC MGs have been carried out, covering applications in RES parks [2], DC homes [7], [8], ESSs [9], [10] and EV charging stations [11], [12]. A whole picture of future employment of DC MGs can be obtained based on these works, while a number of key issues are also identified, including: (i) planning and design of a DC MG realizing an optimal combination of generation, storage and consumption; (ii) control and management of a DC MG achieving economic and autonomous operation; (iii) coordination of clusters of DC MGs with proper regulation of power and energy exchange in regional areas; (iv) grid policy-making, which enables the overall system operation.…”

DC Grids for Smart LED-Based Lighting: The EDISON Solution

“…In the near future, we will be seeing more and more cases in which both AC and typically a low-voltage DC distribution system work side-by-side [29][30][31]. Complete DC homes and offices are already being prototyped and could also become commonplace in the quest to optimize efficiencies [32,33].…”

Practical computation of di/dt for high-speed protection of DC microgrids

“…Given the naturally intermittent nature of these resources, integration of energy storage systems in conjunction with hierarchical energy management and flexible control strategies have enabled the challenge of balancing local energy generation and consumption to be resolved [2]. These modern distribution systems can enable a more environmentally-friendly source of power generation to be realised whilst ensuring a more secure regional power network [4].…”