GIS as a tool for enhancing the optimization of demand side management in residential microgrid

At present, visualization techniques are becoming crucial in smart grid technology, as they help the users to visualize the data and information, instead of dealing with numbers and datasheets. GIS (Geographic Information System) is an efficient tool for displaying the information on the geographical map. Researchers in US have been working on displaying and predicting the solar data on the map. There is a wide scope of utilization of the GIS tools across the world. In this paper, two GIS tools, ArcGIS and QGIS are used for displaying the data from a residential microgrid, over geographical map. The data is stored in the form of layers on QGIS server, which is displayed on the map using ArcGIS Desktop Explorer. In addition, the importance of GIS, reasons for collaboration of the tools, and how to make the user profiling best suited for demand side management (with the help of visualization of data) has also been discussed. MATLAB/Simulink is used for creating a sample residential microgrid, based on data from Singapore Power, to produce the load-data.