Energy footprint framework: A pathway toward smart grid sustainability

According to the World Commission on Environment and Development, sustainable development allows the population to meet the needs of the present while preserving the environment for future generations to meet their own needs. The integration of renewable, low-polluting, distributed energy resources in the power grid is an important step toward sustainable development. In this article, we propose two architectures, clustered and distributed, for labeling the energy source provided to the smart grid. A label contains the energy amount provided to the smart grid and its sustainability index. Labels from multiple energy sources can be compounded and displayed to end users accordingly with the architecture used to inform how sustainable the production process of the energy being rendered to the consumers in a given area is. The comprehension of how sustainable the energy production is can entail a change of mind in consumers and energy distributors. We also evaluate both architectures according to the the sustainability index accuracy and generated network traffic.