BAE Systems Report

Today I read the BAE Systems report on smart grids, here is a summery:

This report gives a detailed overview of smart grids and there applications. It begins with defining what a smart grid is and what it consists of. It then goes on to define how it could be used to manage the electricity in a static or deployable army base.

It identifies three aspects of the system that it would implement: demand side management (DSM), supply side managment (SSM) and Network management (NM). DSM is concerned with understanding and manageing consumer power demands in order to minimise peak power across many different consumers.SSM is Resposible for ensuring there is sufficient electrical power available to meet the total real-time consumers electrical power requirements. Needs to balance the generating of power across different generators and facilities. Uses predicted power estimates. NM manages the transmission and distribution of electrical power from the electricity generators to the consumers. This report provides the advantages of using a smart gird to manage the electricy on an army base.

Reading this report gave me some interesting areas that I could look into:

power dispatch and scheduling
network load balancing

All in all I want to look at power flow management and how this could be achieved in a microgrid environment.