Objective:
A Smart Grid is a form of electricity network utilizing digital technology. Smart Grid delivers electricity from suppliers to consumers using two-way digital communications to control appliances at consumer level. This saves energy, reduces costs and increases reliability and transparency. In existing (centralized) power grid, the basic principle of transferring energy from power plant to many users cannot often meet the increase in demand. To resolve this problem, the trend is to seamlessly integrate the sources of renewable energy, and allow distributed power generation. This necessitates a scalable grid structure connecting distributed sources of energy supply and consumers, and offers better disruption resilience.
Origin of Proposal:
There are a number of open research problems in designing practical Smart Grid. The main difference between a traditional grid and a smart grid is that the latter relies more on communication between consumers, suppliers, smart devices and applications. The power networks and information networks shall be integrated into Smart Grid network for bidirectional data flow, control flow and energy flows. Other open research problems include- price driven real-time demand response, disruption resilience with self-healing, management of intermittent power supplies, dynamic pricing, reduction in energy loss, and scheduling of power consumption to constrain peak load.
To investigate various other research problems and enable the development, analysis, evaluation of efficacious algorithm and protocol as a solutions to these problems, it is essential to build the Smart Grid Lab test-bed. State-of-the-art Smart Grid design needs innovation in a number of dimensions: distributed and dynamic network with two-way information and energy transmission, seamless integration of renewable energy sources, management of intermittent power supplies, real-time demand response, and energy pricing strategy. To realize these, the research work is aimed for designing a wireless Smart Grid test-bed to help the Smart Grid research community analyze and evaluate their designs in-line with the requirements of industry standards. The industry – academia connect through this venture would enhance and equip the department faculty and students with technology and also foster young technologists to reach greater heights in their domain expertise. With this it is possible to contrive novel protocols in the lab environment
Scheme: VGST – KIST L1
Scheme: Karnataka Fund for Infrastructure Strengthening in Science and Technology (K-FIST)-VGST Knowledge Centre
Amount: Rs. 20 Lakhs (Level – 1)
