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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Marco Maccioni

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Guest Editor

Department of Astronautics, Electric and Energy Engineering, “Sapienza” University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy
Interests: power system analysis; grounding systems; grid resilience; smart grids
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Mihai Sanduleac

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Guest Editor

Department of Electrical Power Systems, University Politehnica of Bucharest, 042 Bucharest, Romania
Interests: power system analysis; smart metering; microgrids; smart grids

Dr. Tommaso Bragatto

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Guest Editor

Department of Astronautics, Electric and Energy Engineering, “Sapienza” University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy
Interests: smart grids; distribution network planning and operation; demand response; Storage; electric mobility; smart metering

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to inform you that we are planning a Special Issue entitled Challenges and Research Trends of Smart Grids and Distribution Networks.

During recent decades, distribution networks have dealt with the growth of distributed generation from fluctuating energy resources, the electrification of consumption, and the widespread use of electric vehicles. These trends are pushing distribution system operators to change the traditional planning and operation of the grid as they are driven towards innovation by new regulatory frameworks from national authorities and cutting-edge technologies.

In this context, research activities play a fundamental role in evaluating the technical and economic benefits of applying new technologies and adopting innovative frameworks that enable the use of energy flexibility resources such as EV, storage systems, and demand response. Moreover, the rising decentralization of the energy system through advanced metering infrastructure and distributed asset monitoring is unveiling an enormous opportunity for distribution system operators to leverage big data and AI technologies to improve decision making in the planning and operation of new distribution networks.

The motivation for this Special Issue lies in the need to collect the most recent and advanced studies on the challenges and research trends in smart grids and distribution networks, focusing on technical matters from the perspective of the power system.

We invite all interested colleagues to contribute their state-of-the-art review papers or latest studies related to the challenges and research trends of smart grids and distribution networks.

We hope that this initiative will be well received and we look forward to your contributions.

Sincerely,

Dr. Tommaso Bragatto
Prof. Dr. Marco Maccioni
Dr. Mihai Sanduleac
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

smart grids
active distribution network
energy storage technology
microgrids
hybrid electric grids
flexibility energy resources
advanced metering infrastructure
distributed asset monitoring
hosting capacity
electric vehicle charging stations

Published Papers (1 paper)

Research

24 pages, 2032 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Multi-Agent Real-Time Advanced Metering Infrastructure Based on Fog Computing

by Ivan Popović, Aleksandar Rakić and Ivan D. Petruševski

Energies 2022, 15(1), 373; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/en15010373 - 05 Jan 2022

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2828

Abstract

This effort to make the power grid more intelligent is tightly coupled with the deployment of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) as an integral part of the future vision of smart grid. The goal of AMI is to provide necessary information for the consumers and utilities to accurately monitor and manage energy consumption and pricing in real time. Immediate benefits are enhanced transparency and efficiency of energy usage and the improvement of customer services. Although the road map toward successful AMI deployment is clearly defined, many challenges and issues are to be solved regarding the design of AMI. In this paper, a multi-agent AMI based on the fog-computing approach is presented. Architecture follows structural decomposition of AMI functionalities encapsulated in a form of local and area-specific service components that reside at the different tiers of hierarchically organized AMI deployment. Fog computing concepts provide the framework to effectively solve the problems of creating refined and scalable solutions capable of meeting the requirements of the AMI as a part of future smart grid. On the other hand, agent-based design enables concurrent execution of AMI operations across the distributed system architecture, in the same time improving performance of its execution and preserving the scalability of the AMI solution. The real-time performance of the proposed AMI solution, related to the periodic and on-demand acquisition of metering data from the connected electricity meters, was successfully verified during one year of pilot project operation. The detailed analysis of the performance of AMI operation regarding data collection, communication and data availability across the deployed pilot AMI, covering several transformer station areas with diverse grid topologies, is also presented. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Challenges and Research Trends of Smart Grids and Distribution Network)

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