Decision-Guided Self-Architecting Framework for integrated distribution and Energy Management

The future success of the Smart Grid (SG) depends on many technological developments and innovations being created. The SG will be characterized by decentralized generation, improved network communications, demand response, greater reliability and robustness to failures. The future power grid will also have many interacting components needing greater capabilities to coordinate and manage power and information flows in as an efficient manner as possible. Though many power distribution engineering and analysis tools have been developed to operate the grid in a real-time manner, there are still areas requiring improved systems integration and decision-making. One such critical area that has great opportunity for improvement is at the interface between Distribution Management Systems (DMS) operated by distribution utilities and Energy Management Systems (EMS) operated by end consumers. This paper proposes the development of a set of technologies in the form of Decision-Guided Self-Architecting (DGSA) Framework whose purpose is to provide integrated, real-time optimal decision support in the common domain that intersects the operations of DMS and EMS. This is a key area requiring attention as the overall grid may be sub-optimized unless there is well-integrated and coordinated, optimal decision-making across the various power generating, distributing, and consuming entities of the SG. In addition, this paper also describes the supporting technologies upon which the framework is based and presents two key applications of the DGSA Framework: Energy Management Systems and an Energy Investment Advisor. Also presented are two cases that each illustrate various scenarios for how the framework would be implemented and the type of decisions that would be made with such a framework.