Current Status of Implementation for Smart and Resilient Community in Japan

The widespread shortage of electricity occurred by the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred in March of 2011 has made us keenly aware of the need for households, offices, factories, and local governments to maintain their own power sources that are not completely dependent on electric power companies. In constructing such power sources, locally generated and consumed renewable energy from solar and wind sources would be mainly utilized. However, such power sources would affect the power grid through fluctuation of power output and the deterioration of power quality. Therefore, a new social infrastructure to supply electric power would be required. As a countermeasure of the problem, it would be suitable to create resilient and expandable distribution networks that are of appropriate scale for their respective regions instead of large-scale networks all at once. The network will add new clusters when needed, and have them collaborate with each other where regional governments are the main entities. In this paper, the current status and features of the government driven developments for smart grids and communities in Japan are introduced, and cluster-oriented expandable networks are discussed focusing on resiliency of the grid against natural disaster.