Co-simulation of a smart home model based on a micro electricity market

Demand Side Management (DSM) represents one of the most important factors in increasing the overall electrical system efficiency. It assists significantly in integration of renewable energy sources and domestic micro cogeneration as well. Consequently, it leads to several advantages that works towards improving grid stability, peak-clipping, and energy planning. The demand side management could be realized through an Energy Management System (EMS). The EMS is usually applied within a Smart Home, so that it can manipulate all the household appliances’ operations. Several load shifting operational strategies have been proposed in the literature to either minimize the overall energy consumption of the user, shave the load peaks or minimize the energy bill. Throughout this contribution, an EMS based on a micro electricity market model, in which all the devices compete based on the energy costs to minimize the overall energy bill, will be presented. The EMS calculates the cost signal and distributes it over to the supply and demand side devices so that they can take their own sale or purchase decisions. To model such a system, SimulationX, which is a Modelica based software, and Simulink have been used simultaneously. SimulationX was used in modelling all the physical behaviors such as the house model, the user interactions and the smart devices communication within the market, while Simulink was used to predict the electrical load so that the market can produce a cost signal for the next 24 hours. Co-simulation over a TCP/IP link between the two software was set to send the smart meter data out of SimulationX to Simulink and to receive back the prediction. The results will show out the ability of the model in reducing the overall energy bill in comparison to the conventional homes. Also, it will present the optimal economical smart home system configuration through comparing different micro CHP types, heat storage capacities, batteries capacities, and PV system sizes. Furthermore, an outlook on the further possible developments that could be applied on the EMS will be presented.     «

Demand Side Management (DSM) represents one of the most important factors in increasing the overall electrical system efficiency. It assists significantly in integration of renewable energy sources and domestic micro cogeneration as well. Consequently, it leads to several advantages that works towards improving grid stability, peak-clipping, and energy planning. The demand side management could be realized through an Energy Management System (EMS). The EMS is usually applied within a Smart Home,...     »