Pave the way for sustainable smart homes: A reliable hybrid AC/DC electricity infrastructure

The development of emerging smart grid technologies has led to more and more penetration of renewable energy resources and electric energy storage in the residential sectors. Besides, owing to the significant evolution of power electronic devices, there is a rapid growth in penetration of DC loads and generations, such as PV and electric vehicles (EVs), into the buildings and homes as a building block of the future smart cities. This is despite the fact that the electricity infrastructure of the conventional buildings is designed based on AC electricity and as a result, there would be a lot of losses due to the frequent power conversion from AC to DC and vice versa. Besides, according to a significant amount of energy consumption in the residential sector, buildings have a prominent role to confront environmental problems and obtain sustainability. In such circumstances, and considering the energy outlook, rethinking the electrification structure of the built environment is necessary. This work is an effort in this regard and looks for a sustainable energy infrastructure for the cyber-physical homes of the future. Three disparate electrification architectures are analyzed. The proposed framework, which is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem, not only considers costs associated with investment and operation but also evaluates the reliability of each structure by considering the different ratios of DC loads. Moreover, the optimal size of renewable energy resources and the effect of EV demand response, and different prices of PV and battery are precisely investigated. The efficacy of the proposed approach is evaluated via numerical simulation.