Control system in the smart grid: State of the art and opportunities

The Smart Grids (SGs) are viewed as the new generation of electric power systems, uniting the development of Information Technologies (IT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and distributed systems for more features on the real-time monitoring of the Demand Response (DR) and the energy consumptions. As an essential characteristics of the SGs, DR can reschedule the user's energy consumptions to reduce the operating expense from expensive generators to defer the capacity addition in the long run. At first, this paper presents a short review about the smart grids. Its concepts, advantages, and components. However, among many SG challenges, we chose to talk about DR and its control systems, which has become a main part of the system operations in the SG driven restructured power systems around the world. We have examined in our study some articles that deal with the most recent challenges of DR such as the heuristic optimization, the scheduling structures, the load shifting etc. Then we presented control methods of DR on smart grids. In particularly we highlighted two specific methods of based control systems: 'The Multi-Agent System' (MAS), and 'The Virtual Power Plants' (VPP). We identified some studies that used the MAS considering the upstream grid, Distributed Generation (DG) and Demand Response Resources (DRRs) to reduce the peak load and cost of a smart distribution network feeder. In the same way, we summarized the modelling methodologies of VPP used and developed by other researchers, in order to reduce the electricity price and control the consumers' usage, and also to maximize the benefits in the energy market.