Smart Village: applying smart grid on a local level

In the effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere more and more renewable production is integrated in the electricity production sector. Plans of the Dutch government made the commitment for over 37% renewable produced electricity in the year 2020, but unfortunately renewable resources bring their own set of problems that will need to be overcome. The main problem facing this research involves the unrelated pattern between electricity demand and renewable electricity production. Wind and solar do not always produce when there is electricity demand and vice versa, there will still be electricity demand when there is no wind or sunshine available. To match demand with supply some kind of management is needed. The aim of this research is to investigate one of the options capable of solving these mentioned problems accompanying renewable integration. The solution might be found in smart grid technology working together with decentralised renewable production and storage of electricity. Within this research the electrical demand of a village containing around 300 houses and additional buildings is simulated by using two distinct patterns, firstly the normal electricity demand pattern that represents an average village in the Netherlands and secondly a village where the gasoline car is replaced with the electric car. This brings with it a new electricity demand pattern that contains higher peaks and consumes more electricity on a yearly basis. The village will produce a part of its own electricity by using wind turbines, solar PV and a biogas installation. Wind and solar are known to produce very erratically and unrelated to the demand in the village, they are not capable of producing more when demand is high. In an attempt to match renewable production with demand two main strategies are used. Firstly, storage of overproduction, achieved with a battery system and secondly smart grid technology able to shift demand of certain appliances to a later time in the day.