Balancing power consumption and production in smart grids

Abstract

Particularly with the rise of intermittent renewable energy sources, balancing electricity consumption and production is the core challenge of smart grids. The most important drawback of existing approaches is that controlling loads or producers is typically heavily regulated by contracts or laws. These real-world constraints significantly increase the complexity associated with achieving the aforementioned balance. In this paper, we propose a planning algorithm for smart grids that respects contractual or legal constraints while balancing power consumption and production. Additionally, our planning approach manages energy producers as well as consumers. Thus, it achieves the balance in the grid by controlling a combination of producers and consumers.