Smart Grids and Smart Buildings

The evolutionary transition to smart grids and smart buildings holds a great promise for a cleaner, more efficient power; healthier air; and lower greenhouse gas emissions. This chapter opens with an introduction that provides an overview of conventional power grid and its evolution to smart grid. In section “Smart Grid Technologies,” the smart grid technologies are presented. Section “Renewable Energy Resources in the Grid: Challenges and Opportunities” discusses a number of potential challenges and opportunities in integrating renewable energy (RE) with the existing grid. The next section presents the demand response (DR) concept, which is a way to decrease the electrical load. In section “Geographical Information System (GIS) and Smart Grid,” the importance of geographical information system (GIS) to provide a virtual representation of the smart grid is highlighted. In section “Smart Grid Networking and Communication Technologies,” the role of communication networks in smart grid operation is described. Section “Security and Privacy” presents a discussion of network security and privacy concerns. Section “Cloud Computing for the Smart Grid” explores the use of cloud computing to facilitate the operation of smart grid. Section “Advances and Challenges in the Development of Smart Grids” deals with the advances and challenges in the development of smart grid. The economics of smart grid are discussed in section “Smart Grid Economics.” In section “Road Map to ‘Mature’ Smart Grids,” a model is discussed that can provide guidance and a road map to establish a fully functioning “mature” smart grid. Section “Smart Buildings” introduces smart buildings, their integration within the smart grid infrastructure, the energy management approaches between building clusters and the microgrid environment, and finally provides real case studies of smart buildings.