The Energy Internet is based on the same principles as that of
the classic Internet except that energy rather data packets are routed between
sources and destinations.
It sometimes also referred to as mico-grids or
nano-grids, but generally these terms are a misnomer as they really refer to a
smaller version of the traditional electrical grid.
Traditional power systems are passive, hierarchical and for
the most part have no intelligence or management. Although there is a lot of talk of Smart
Grids, it is largely a retrofit technology to add some semblance of intelligence
and control to traditional power systems and usually goes no further than the
meter base at your home or business.
The Energy Internet is not intended to displace the
traditional electrical grid but help manage the electrical distribution of
power from the plethora of small solar panels that are popping up on roofs of campuses and homes. The traditional electrical grid has difficult
challenges handling the very spiky and intermittent loads offered by local
rooftop solar panels and windmills.
The Energy Internet can significantly save on power costs,
especially from always on, low power electronic network devices and computers.
These devices now consume up to 40% of the electricity in a typical home and
even larger percentages in business and universities. The Energy Internet is an ideal match for delivering
power from local solar panels to these devices.
The Energy Internet is also useful infrastructure for powering critical network functions and other services during major power outages of the traditional electrical grid. It is expected that the number of outages on the traditional grid will increase significantly due to severe weather as a result of climate change.
The basic construct of the Energy Internet assumes there are
multiple loosely coupled energy sources such as solar panel arrays, plugged in
electric vehicles, battery storage, wind mills etc. The main electrical grid with
appropriate routing interface, may also be one of the loosely interconnected devices,
but it is not the hierarchical main connection that we see in today’s
electrical systems. These energy sources, as well as their sinks are
interconnected by a variety of generally low power links such as Power over
Ethernet (PoE), USB, 400/60 HZ multiplex power, and pulse power over Cat5/6
cable. As well these sources and sinks may be interconnected with more
traditional powers buses such as 110/220 and 48v DC interconnects, again
assuming they have the appropriate power routing interface.
Many companies are already making routing and switching
products for the Energy Internet such as Solatron and GridOn, but as yet there
has been no standardization of Energy Internet routing and signaling protocols.
With Energy Internet it is assumed that many energy
consuming devices power also have their own local power storage or generation
independent of the electrical grid. Some examples include:
– WiFi
node with its own solar panel
– Backup
battery power on computer
– Electric
vehicle with its own battery bank
– Street
lamps with their own solar panels
– Smart
phone/tablet solar powered charging station
– UPS power packs etc
Each energy consuming or producing device has an energy
router (typically chip based) to signal availability of excess power or
conversely to signal the need for additional power to continue operating. An Energy Internet assumes a peer to peer architecture
between routing nodes. The enterprise LAN
or Internet network is used for out of band signaling and routing between the various
nodes.
Neighboring devices pass on routing information and power is
routed from a device with surplus power, on a hop by hop basis, to a destination
using a number of power channels as mentioned previously such as PoE or pulse
power over Cat 5/6 wiring.
In general the power loads for an Energy Internet tend to be
small, typically less than 1 KW. It is
therefore ideal for providing redundant distributed power to existing
intelligent networked devices such as computers, routers, servers, WiFi nodes, eVehicle charging stations etc. Most
of these devices usually have their own on board battery storage which allows
for techniques such as round robin charging or store and forward power
distribution.
Suggested signaling and routing
protocols for the Energy Internet Open Shortest Power Function (OSPF) for
routing of power within a single management domain and Border Gateway Power
Routing (BGPB) between management
domains. BGPB for example would be used
by household neighbors to share power between themselves independent of the electrical
grid using old copper or coax cables for interconnection. With pulse power these cables can carry up to
5Kw of power.
OSPF and BGPB are loosely based
on the Internet routing protocols OSPF and BGP, but carry extra parameters necessary
for the routing of power as opposed to packets.
See also High Level Architecture for Zero Carbon Internet