Smart campus microgrid: Advantages and the main architectural components

With a world wild increase in electricity demand, smart grids emerged as a solution for various problems within the current electrical grid. Some novel aspects about smart grids are the use renewable energy sources, energy storage and also allowing the user to take some decisions to control energy use. Microgrids are building blocks of smart grids and given that academic campuses are very good contributors to energy consumption, their energy consumption can be efficiently controlled by using an energy management system. This paper focuses on the importance of smart campuses with an emphasis on the importance of an energy management system.