Design of a portal for time of use pricing in smart grid

• Main Author: Lee, Liang Ying
• Other Authors: So Ping Lam
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/63888
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Every year, there is a growing demand for electricity as the amount of population and infrastructure increases. During peak hours, there will be a heavy strain on the power grid. Currently, customers pay a standard amount of money for every kilo-watt hour of electricity consumed. To encourage the customers to not use non-essential appliances which consumes electricity at peak hours, a Time-of-Use (ToU) pricing can be introduced. ToU pricing involves a scheme where a customer is charged based on the time (on peak and off peak) when electricity is consumed. A customer will have a higher incentive to use non-essential appliances during off peak hours, when the cost of electricity is lower as compared to on peak or mid peak. A smart grid is a type of electricity grid which uses various technologies to enable real time monitoring on supply and demand of electricity. It is also able to incorporate other sources of energy aside from the upstream electrical network and allow a two-way flow of electricity. In recent years, there have been a push for clean energy due to the environmental effects (mainly carbon dioxide production) traditional generator produces. As such, the usage of fuel cells as an alternate energy source will be expanded on. In this paper, the development of a portal for ToU pricing in smart grid will be explored and explained on. The portal will be able to display the cost analysis of using fuel cells during peak hours, the amount of cumulative savings a customer can have upon adhering to the ToU pricing, as well as the carbon footprint based on the customer's energy consumption. This project will be done entirely in LabVIEW, using data from Singapore as a base and formulas obtained from research papers.