The POWER of Networking: How Networking Can Help Power Management

There is a growing concern worldwide to reduce the carbon footprint through reducing reliance on fossil fuel based energy sources and improving energy efficiency. Fueled by this, the quest to enable a Smart Grid, which aims to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, match the demand to the available supply and improve energy efficiency is gaining momentum. One of the key components of the Smart Grid will be to level the load, i.e. the ability to shift the demand in time so as to match the available supply and in so doing improve utilisation of resources and reduce (ideally avoid) the reliance on environment unfriendly reserve sources of energy as much as possible. This paper discusses the challenges in achieving such load levelling and elaborates on how existing techniques from networking research could be potentially applied to solve these problems. The broader objective of this paper is to initiate discussion and encourage research in the areas highlighted.