The present and future of smart power grid in developing countries

Abstract

Strong and huge interests on smart grid have increased extensively in recent years around the world. This scenario could be a promising reason for future research in this area. This next form of electricity grid will be able to manage various parts of power production from power plants to the customers. Smart grid has become a major challenge in developed nations in both research and utilization aspects. On the other side, application of smart grid in developing countries is still lagging behind as compared to the developed ones. However, most of developing nations are currently investigating potentials of some pilot projects or few research works. In this article, the applied activities in developing countries for smart grid are reviewed and categorized into two major groups: group of pioneer developing countries in smart grid and other developing countries are placed in another group. The findings demonstrate that a few countries such as China, India and Brazil have had proper planning and development in this technology. In some cases like China, the efforts are considered comparable with developed nations like U.S. Therefore, according to the development progress for smart grid in China, India and Brazil, a pattern of reference for other developing countries is suggested.

A review on smart grids and experiences in Brazil

“…The discussion of the overall development of smart grid in Brazil was based on the data presented in Section 3 and a proposed pattern for smart grid development in [62]. This pattern comprises the following aspects: understanding the need for smart grid; governmental support and investment; implementation of pilot projects; integration with renewable energies; and start a huge change.…”

Harnessing and Integrating Africa's Renewable Energy Resources

“…Potential benefits to countries dependent on fossil imports, those with less availability of economical renewable resources, or those with small loads hardly able to obtain economies of scale are significant [7]. Moreover, the integration of smart electricity systems could greatly amplify benefits by increasing the accuracy of balancing mechanisms, thereby improving quality and reliability of power and reducing losses and costs, while also offering African countries' energy sectors opportunities to leapfrog traditional power systems [27,28].…”

Influencia de las ráfagas de viento en la calidad de la energía de los parques eólicos

“…Las centrales eólicas modernas tales como generadores de inducción doblemente alimentados (DFIGs) han demostrado capacidades de potencia reactiva que les permiten operar en diversos modos como: el control de factor de potencia y la operación de control de tensión (Fadaeenejad et al, 2014), (Mansouri et al, 2004).…”