Generating Realistic Dynamic Prices and Services for the Smart Grid

The smart grid promises to change the way people manage their energy needs, to facilitate the inclusion of small-scale renewable sources, and to open the energy market to all. One of the enabling instruments is the real-time pricing of energy at the retail level: dynamic and flexible tariffs will vary through the day to reflect the actual availability of energy and the congestion conditions of the power grid, in turn, helping the power grid to stay in balance. Current pilots and research efforts consider how such dynamic tariffs can be formed and how these will affect energy distribution and usage, although currently there are no instances of them deployed. To experiment with dynamic pricing, we present a vision and related implementation of the services needed by the end user to enable the smart grid in a smart home. Our system realistically simulates the dynamic prices and services of the smart grid, using data coming from wholesale energy markets and renewable installations. In addition, we perform an economic analysis to assess the cost of energy produced by small renewable-based installations. The aim is to offer a testing tool to easily realize large simulations, testbeds, and pilot projects for future energy distribution scenarios. We have tested the proposed services and dynamic pricing solution in an existing living laboratory, showing the feasibility of the approach and effectiveness of the tool.