Holonic Architecture of the Smart Grid

Ebisa Negeri, Nico Baken, Marjan Popov

Electrical Sustainable Energy, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands.
Network Architectures and Services, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands.

DOI: 10.4236/sgre.2013.42025                

Abstract

With the growing concerns about sustainable energy, energy efficiency and energy security, the electrical power system is undergoing major changes. Distributed energy sources are becoming widely available at the lower parts of the grid. As a result, more and more end consumers are transforming from passive consumers to active “prosumers” that can autonomously generate, store, import and/or export power. As prosumers increasingly dominate the power system, the system demands capability that allows enormous number of stakeholders with heterogeneous types to exchange power on the grid. Unfortunately, the classical power system cannot efficiently handle this scenario since it was designed for centralized power distribution. Thus, restructuring the rather old power system is indispensable. In this paper, we apply the holonic approach to structure the smart grid as a system that is bottom-up organized from autonomous prosumers that are recursively clustered at various aggregation layers. Based on this, we present a control architecture of the smart grid using holonic concepts. Our control architecture is characterized by autonomy of the prosumers, distributed control, recursive self-similar control structures at different aggregation levels. Further, we present a service oriented architecture (SOA) framework that models the control functions that make up the holonic control architecture. Our proposed control architecture is tested using a simulation set-up.

Keywords

Smart Grid; Architecture; Holon

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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