Smart Buildings For Smart Grids: A Real-world Testbed

Abstract

Smart Grids (SG) are emerging as a very promising technology meant to cope with the stringent worldwide demand on energy and on relevant ecologic measures. At the heart of the Smart Grids lie Smart Buildings (SB). SB are the building blocks of SG. Either residential or industrial, SBs are consuming most of the produced electrical energy. However, and in the context of SG, SBs are meant to produce energy as well and contribute to stabilizing the Demand/Response (DR) variance whereby produced energy is injected back into the SG. This occurs mainly in case of energy shortage in the main SG or in case of excess in energy production. To leverage “smartness” in buildings, continuous data monitoring (e.g., energy production/consumption levels) using wireless sensors, and real-time dissemination/processing of this data, is essential. To further boost buildings’ smartness, deploying context-awareness, whereby electrical appliances can be switched On/Off depending on context (e.g., presence and ambient temperature), would bring considerable added-value. In this paper, a blueprint for deploying a real-world SB testbed is presented.