Designing the Interplay of Energy Plane and Communication Plane in the Energy Packet Grid

Hardware Realization of Participants in an Energy Packet-based Power Grid

“…The EP grid is inspired by the Internet as a network of networks [24]. Accordingly, the power grid is partitioned into smaller subnetworks called EP cells, which are separate electric grids.…”

“…Each power electronic interface must take an electric role. It can either be a voltage controller or a current controller in the EP cell [24]. If the EP device contains more than one power electronic interface, it can also serve as an EP router linking neighboring EP cells.…”

“…EP devices transfer energy packets to each other according to present and projected supply and demand. This is accomplished by an EP transfer protocol, e. g. the Simple Energy Packet Transfer protocol (SEPT) [24]. SEPT enables EP devices that reside within the same EP cell to negotiate the parameters of an EP transfer.…”

“…These works demonstrate the advantage of efficient grid resource utilization if a central coordinator can authorize loads to turn on during discrete time steps. The EP grid proposed by the authors in [24] constitutes a more extensive approach, in which conceivably all power flows in the grid consist of energy packets with specified power levels. This way, the local power balance can be maintained by design while also respecting grid equipment limits.…”

“…This way, the local power balance can be maintained by design while also respecting grid equipment limits. The present paper builds on the envisioned architecture introduced in [24] and will detail the design of a hardware realization of participants in an EP grid. These can then be used to form an experimental EP grid and to show the feasibility of such EP transfers.…”