The cellular approach: smart energy region Wunsiedel. Testbed for smart grid, smart metering and smart home solutions

The ongoing transition from a conventional energy supply towards an energy system based on renewable sources requires fundamental changes to the energy infrastructure. In particular, the move from centralized towards distributed power generation significantly increases the demand for ICT-based management and control. Today ICT-based energy management is mostly purely central, making the critical infrastructure of power supply sometimes inflexible and potentially vulnerable to (cyber-)attacks. Addressing these challenges, the future grid requires high automation and distributed intelligence on field level being able to work independently from a central system. Distribution grids are often sparsely monitored and a system wide upgrade of measuring technology is associated with high costs. However, information about load behavior at the nodes of a grid is essential for grid state identification and load forecasting. This paper shows the concept of load balancing and the related IT architecture for monitoring and control of distributed energy systems, where smart metering and smart home technologies play a key role in the smart grid of the future. Readers are invited to contribute to the research work and field laboratory of the University of Bayreuth, which is operated by an innovative utility company in Bavaria.