Towards energy webs: Hierarchical tree topology for future smart grids

Digital era of technology transforms communication and information systems in a revolutionarily way, which makes our applications more integrated, more connected and smarter. However, conventional energy systems do not adequately benefit from opportunities of digital revolution, yet. Interdisciplinary works in the scope of smart grids grow our expectations from electricity grids such as increase of domestic renewable energy utilization, application of active load management in residences. One of challenging tasks for the digital era of energy systems is the transforming traditional static consumer concept to the active user concept, namely prosumers, who exhibit renewable energy generation potential and share own generation by the energy webs. A major problem for the implementation of practical energy webs is the management of energy balance in grid due to the fact that prosumers lead to the high uncertainty and volatility in generation and demand. Authors suggest that hierarchical tree topology as grid architecture can facilitate energy balance management and energy dispatching mechanisms for future energy webs. Because, acyclic structure and scalability of hierarchical tree (HT) topology present advantages of defining family relationships on the node hierarchy of grids. This property can improve accessibility and controllability of the smart grid and facilitates energy dispatches on the grid. This study gives a discussion on advantages of HT topology for smart grid applications and projects for some opportunities on the way of future energy webs.