The ENCOURAGE ICT architecture for heterogeneous smart grids

Abstract

The ENCOURAGE project aims at rationalizing energy usage in building by implementing a smart energy grid based on intelligent scheduling of energy consuming appliances, renewable energy production, and inter-building energy trading. This paper presents the reference architecture proposed in the context of the ENCOURAGE project, and relates it with the goals of its research efforts.

Lessons Learned in Building a Middleware for Smart Grids

“…The smart grid presented in this work, and deployed in a number of demonstrators [6], proved to have a reasonable performance for the task at hand. A number of lessons have been taken by the work that led to its development:…”

“…The ENCOURAGE -acronym for Embedded iNtelligent COntrols for bUildings with Renewable generAtion and storage -Project [6] developed a platform that contributes for the optimization of energy usage in buildings and participate in smart grid environments. The goals of the platform are a 20% saving on energy consumption, in line with European targets [8], and the ability to have a systematic and a performant monitoring system that provides near real-time information regarding all devices, presenting data to users through web-based interfaces, reports, and social network technologies.…”

“…This paper analyses the results of the European project ENCOURAGE [6], and the lessons learned in the process, while building a software platform to support a smart grid. To this purpose, after providing background on smart grids and related middleware (Section 2), we model a typical smart environment (Section 3) and we discuss different design choices that can impact the performance of the main software modules involved in the distributed system (Section 4).…”

Message-oriented middleware for smart grids

“…The smart grid can and must adhere to standards to pursue the three goals [3] of: i) improving interoperability between neighboring systems; ii) limiting the complexity of the system when it scales to a large user base; and iii) opening new markets to technology providers and utilities companies. Currently there are (too) many standards that address the smart grid area, focusing on different components or layers of the grid and providing different views on the system, but the latest standardization activities are leading different approaches to convergence on a common semantics.…”

Arrowhead compliant virtual market of energy

“…In the past few years, the rising of the smart-grid paradigm has enabled energy saving approaches based on controlling how and when energy is consumed [1].…”