Long- Term Energy Planning of Iran Respect to the Implementation of Smart Grid Infrastructures

Nowadays, the power industry is counted as a vital economic infrastructure of any country. The need for electricity is increased considerably concurrent with the advances in technology, industry development, and population rise. The smart grid provides solutions to the current obstacles of power system operation, including reliability, environmental sustainability, and energy efficiency challenges. Hence, the smart grid is considered as a new structure to deal with operational problems. In this study, the restructuring plan of Iran's distribution network into a smart grid configuration is proposed, in which various scenarios such as the integration of smart metering systems, hybrid electric vehicles, smart buildings, distributed generation sources, energy storage facilities, and demand-side resources have been investigated. The energy balance sheet of Iran-2014 and the data of the last 20 years are employed as the reference energy system. The LEAP software is applied for the long-term planning of the targeted scenarios. The results show that if the smart grid plan is implemented in Iran until 2050, the greenhouse gas emission and energy consumption will be reduced. The conclusions express that the total generation of primary energy carriers will be alleviated, which will provide an improvement of 14.59% and an economic save of $32.2 billion.