Using flexible energy infrastructures for demand response in a Smart Grid city

Abstract

The emerging infrastructure of the Smart Grid, and the multitude of the new energy services it will offer, is expected to radically affect business relationships among its stakeholders. Beyond enhancements in existing processes, innovative approaches will be made possible by relying on a fine-grained monitoring and control capabilities over modern informationcentric infrastructure. Traditional infrastructure owners will be able to take advantage of the new capabilities in order to not only better manage their costs, but also potentially increase their revenue by tapping into their flexibility of adjusting energy behaviour. The latter is of growing interest to, for instance, facility managers of municipalities who are reassessing cost-benefit issues for their infrastructures which include buildings, offices, arenas, schools, convention centres, shopping complexes, hospitals, hotels, and among other things the public lighting system. A closer look is taken on how flexible prosumer infrastructures may interact with the Smart Grid and how new revenue may be generated. The use case of using the capability-constrained public lighting system (PLS) flexibility as a new revenue source is analysed.