Design and Real-life Deployment of a Smart Nanogrid: A Greek Case Study

Abstract

Microgrids are becoming one of the most promising building blocks for smart grids gaining an increasing attention in the last decade. From critical infrastructures such as hospitals, military bases, desolated or hard to reach areas to universities, research centers, and other industrial infrastructures, basic microgrid principles have been applied presenting enhanced reliability and added value business services to their operation. Recently, such application principles have been further scaled-down, presenting an even more challenging paradigm at single building infrastructure, the nanogrid. Nevertheless, even in such occasions, optimal operation is restricted by the commercial product services, that aren’t always easy to configure or extend towards enabling additional functionalities. This manuscript presents step by step the transformation of a smart home infrastructure into a flexible yet safe nanogrid that allows various control strategies in real-life operation while respecting the fail-safe mechanisms of the deployed commercial assets while introducing additional safety measures. After two years of operation and configuration, by only optimising the energy storage system and evaluating overall performance for almost half a year, promising results demonstrate the untapped potential of such deployments.