The Internet of Things

13Smart Energy

Artemis Voulkidis¹, Theodore Zahariadis², Konstantinos Kalaboukas³, Francesca Santori⁴, and Matevž Vučnik⁵

¹Power Operations Limited, Swindon, UK

²University of Athens, Psachna, Greece

³Singularlogic SA, Athens, Greece

⁴ASM Terni, Terni, Italy

⁵Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia

13.1 Introduction

Society is increasingly dependent on the uninterruptible flow of high‐quality energy supplies, the latter offering a stable basis for services considered necessary for daily life such as heating, light, the Internet, and so on. Despite the technological advances in various relevant fields, mass energy generation continues to operate essentially using its initial design, now more than a century old. Furthermore, energy coming from brown energy sources is becoming insufficient to cover the ever‐increasing energy demand. The proliferation of installations of renewable energy sources (RES), distributed energy storage (DES), and distributed energy resources (DER) worldwide promises to contribute to a more sustainable energy future, also negating the environmental toll incurred by traditional, centralized energy generation. In this context, the simplistic, one‐way power flow featured in the traditional power grids has changed into a dynamic, more complex and multi‐stakeholder one, where the energy consumers can also play the role of energy producers at either the distribution or the transmission part of the grid.

This new producer role attributed to the energy consumers ...