Mitigating Brown-Outs: Fair Distribution of Locally Sourced Energy in Smart Grids

The introduction of more and more local and distributed energy resources (DER) into the current centralized electrical grid poses new challenges to energy distribution. DERs are significantly smaller in production capabilities than central power plants and their production is highly fluctuating. This means that their influence on the electrical grid is difficult to plan for, especially in brown-out situations, when there is not enough energy available to supply all consumers. This work focuses on the subproblem of fair electricity distribution in brown-out phases. Currently, network segments are switched on and off in a round-robin manner, regardless if there are local producers in these segments or not. However, enabling segments that include local producers more often would improve the overall amount of energy available during the brown-out phases, and thus, this measure would increase the number of supplied consumers. We propose new algorithms that leverage the power of local producers, but still keep a fair energy distribution for all consumers. Therefore, we evolve the current notion of fairness to improve the overall quality of service by taking into account equal supply times, as well as maximizing the number of supplied consumers. The proposed algorithms are compared to the current state of the art approach in the German electrical grid. Therefore, extensive simulations based on real-world lowvoltage residential area networks were conducted. The results indicate an improved quality of service during brown-out phases. Moreover, the proposed method is not limited to low-voltage residential areas, but also applies to all hierarchy levels of the energy grid, ranging from the distribution grid down to future households implementing smart grid technologies.