Energy routing in the smart grid for Delay-Tolerant Loads and Mobile Energy Buffers

Energy routing has not been feasible in the traditional power grid due to real-time nature of the electrical services. Electricity is generated and used almost in real time where the balance between the two is maintained by regulation services. Additionally, small number of fixed storage units are utilized to store some portion of the generated energy. In the future electricity grids, Mobile Energy Buffers (MEB) together with local energy buffering capabilities, will be the enabler of energy routing. In this paper, we propose an energy routing framework for low and medium voltage electricity distribution systems that house prioritized MEBs, local buffers and Delay-Tolerant electrical Loads (DTL). We model the distribution system as a token-based system where energy transfer between MEBs and local storage units rely on the availability of tokens that are generated by DTLs. Coordination of token advertisement, storage interest and token access is maintained by machine-to-machine communications. The underlying communication technology can be PowerLine Communications (PLC) or a medium-range wireless communication technology. We provide a mathematical analysis of the token-network with DTLs and prioritized MEBs. We show that coordination and prioritization allow lower blocking rates for high priority MEBs. Our analysis provides valuable insights for utility planning decisions.