Contact: Dan-Cristian Tomozei
Renewables play an increasingly important role in current energy production. Germany has set the ambitious objective of satisfying its electricity needs from renewable sources at 35% by 2020 and at 80% by 2050. The volatility of such sources renders more difficult the task of an energy supplier to match energy demand.
One envisioned approach is to equip homes with devices which receive signals from the Distribution Systems Operator (DSO), and which adapt energy consumption accordingly. The appliances affected by temporary service reductions typically consume a large amount of energy, and have a relatively elastic demand (e.g., heaters, plug-in electric vehicles, etc.).
In this project the aim is to design reliable communication protocols (inspired from the Internet) between the DSO and home devices. Due to the large number of consumers, low protocol complexity plays an important role.