A House Appliances-Level Co-simulation Framework for Smart Grid Applications

Abstract

Renewable energy sources cover a large part of the worldwide energy supply. In 2014 the share was approximately 19.1% [23]. Because of the continued expansion of renewable energy sources, the energy system is moving away from its traditional centralized structure with large producers towards a structure with many distributed generators. While the share of renewable energy in electricity production in 2005 excluding hydropower was 2.6% [24], it was already 4% at the end of 2014. Due to the expansion of wind energy and photovoltaics (PV), fluctuating energy sources must be integrated increasingly into the system. In 2004, the global installed capacity of wind power was 48 GW, whereas with 370 GW it increased by almost eight times in the year 2014. At the same time, the installed PV capacity increased almost 48-fold from 3.7 GWp to 177 GWp [23]. Thus, the classic roles of producers and consumers in the energy system are supplemented by consumers who generate energy, the so-called prosumers. The integration of variable renewables increases the need for centralized and decentralized energy storage. Prosumers equipped with storage systems are also referred to as prostumers.