Organic Architecture for Energy Management and Smart Grids

An unprecedented rise of renewable and distributed energy resources imposes unprecedented challenges in terms of complexity to power grids. Multitudes of devices are not only connected to the electricity grid but need appropriate information and communication technologies for proving their services. These devices ask for novel control mechanisms on different levels and regional scales. In this paper, we show how concepts from Organic Computing may support the controlled self-organization of the future smart grid. We propose a generic hierarchical architecture as a framework for various energy management systems. This architecture is able to reflect the physical power grid structure as well as the interdependencies of its stakeholders, user objectives, subsystems, and devices. It enables adaptive responses to changing objectives as well as disturbances in the system. Various simulations of systems based on the proposed architecture show the applicability of the proposed architecture to domains of energy management in smart grids.