Smart Grid Testbed for Demand Focused Energy Management in End User Environments

Successful deployment of smart grids necessitates experimental validation of their state-of-theart designs in two-way communications, real-time demand response, and monitoring of consumers’ energy usage behavior. The objective is to observe consumers’ energy usage pattern and exploit this information to assist the grid in designing incentives, energy management mechanisms, and real-time demand response protocols, so as help the grid achieve lower costs and improve energy supply stability. Further, by feeding the observed information back to the consumers instantaneously, it is also possible to promote energy efficient behavior among users. To this end, this paper performs a literature survey on smart grid testbeds around the world, and presents the main accomplishments toward realizing a smart grid testbed at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). The testbed is able to monitor, analyze, and evaluate smart grid communication network design and control mechanisms, and test the suitability of various communications networks for both residential and commercial buildings. The testbeds are deployed within the SUTD student dormitories and the main university campus to monitor and record end-user energy consumption in real-time, which will enable us to design incentives, control algorithms, and real-time demand response schemes. The testbed also provides an effective channel to evaluate the needs of communication networks to support various smart grid applications. In addition, our initial results demonstrate that our testbed can provide an effective platform to identify energy waste, and prompt the needs of a secure communications channel as the energy usage pattern can provide privacy related information on individual users.