Modeling the last mile of the smart grid

Abstract

The energy market is changing as it is undergoing unbundling, accommodating renewable sources in the grid and allowing for micro-production to be part of the smart grid. Such changes will have a major impact on the underlying transport and distribution infrastructures. These have been traditionally hierarchical, unidirectional and capillary, though the new smart grid scenario calls for an infrastructure that has higher connectivity, that is bidirectional and naturally complex. In this paper, we look at ways of modeling the distribution grid as a complex network taking into account all voltage levels, that is, including the last mile of the grid reaching the end user. We provide and argue for design principles for such smart grid models and present results that call for a denser Medium and Low Voltage power grid. The design principles come from an analysis of an existing grid portion and consider its evolution into a smart grid.