Goal-Oriented Prosumer Community Groups for the Smart Grid

Abstract

Energy demand is continually rising, worldwide. Most of the current demand is met by non-renewable energy sources, like coal, petroleum, and natural gas. However, currently, society is faced with the problem of dwindling and scarce non-renewable energy resources, resulting in a shortage of energy. Moreover, the process of energy production from non-renewable sources is increasing greenhouse gas emissions, leading to unpleasant and potentially dangerous climatic changes. Therefore, in today's world, the focus is on inducing users to reduce their household energy consumption, and shift to using energy produced from renewable sources, such as solar, water, and wind. Not only this, but users are being encouraged to generate the green energy, and to either store the surplus for future usage or to feed it back into the utility grid. In order to evolve such bidirectional energy and information flow, the concept of the smart-grid has been proposed.