Summary
Smart grid mitigates the environmental concerns associated with the global warming and climate shifting and reduces the dependence of the power generation on conventional fossil fuels. This is done by energy efficiency improvement and renewable energy sources exploitation at large scales in the form of centralized systems as well as small‐scale systems in the form of microgrids and nanogrids. However, smart grid technology brings new challenges to the big data management of the new power system construction. Additionally, due to the large‐scale intermittent distributed renewable resources contribution and stochastic electric vehicles integration, the current energy management systems must undergo some improvements to handle the smart grid requirements. Cloud computing, as an intermittent based on‐demand computing model, serves an emerging solution to the aforementioned challenges. As a result, this paper presents a survey study on the smart grid and state of art energy management methods and the necessitation of the cloud computing incorporation in smart grid energy management. Then, the application of the cloud computing in energy management, demand side management programs, building energy management systems, energy hubs, and power dispatching systems have been discussed and associated models are addressed.