Residential load forecasting has been playing an increasingly important role in modern smart grids. Due to the variability of residents' activities, individual residential loads are usually too volatile to forecast accurately. A long short-term memory-based deep-learning forecasting framework with appliance consumption sequences is proposed to address such volatile problem. It is shown that the forecasting accuracy can be notably improved by including appliance measurements in the training data. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through extensive comparison studies on a real-world dataset.

The cyber security of modern power systems has drawn increasing attention in both academia and industry. Many detection and defense methods for cyber-attacks have therefore been proposed to enhance robustness of modern power systems. In this paper, we propose a new, distributed blockchain-based protection framework to enhance the self-defensive capability of modern power systems against cyber-attacks. We present a comprehensive discussion on how blockchain technology can be used to enhance the robustness and security of the power grid, by using meters as nodes in a distributed network which encapsulates meter measurements as blocks. Effectiveness of the proposed protection framework is demonstrated via simulation experiments on the IEEE-118 benchmark system.

The prevalence of distributed energy resources encourages the concept of an electricity ‘Prosumer (Producer and Consumer)’. This paper proposes a distributed electricity trading system to facilitate the peer-to-peer electricity sharing amongst prosumers. The proposed system includes two layers. In the first layer, a Multi-Agent System (MAS) is designed to support the prosumer network, and an agent coalition mechanism is proposed to ena-ble the prosumers to form coalitions and negotiate electricity trading. In the second layer, a Blockchain (BC) based transaction settlement mechanism is proposed to enable the trusted and secure settlement of electricity trading transactions formed in the first layer. Simulations are conducted based on the Java Agent Development Environment (JADE) to validate the proposed electricity trading process.

The increasing prevalence of electric vehicles (EVs) calls for the effective planning of the charging infrastructure. In this study, a multi-objective, multistage collaborative planning model is proposed for the coupled EV charging station infrastructure and power distribution network. The planning model aims to minimize the investment and operation costs of the distribution system while maximize the annually captured traffic flow. The uncertainties of EV charging loads are modeled for three different types of charging stations. The FISK's stochastic traffic assignment model is utilized to model realistic traffic flows. And a new class of volume-delay functions, conical congestion functions, is employed to overcome the shortcomings of the conventional Bureau of Public Roads function. The multi-objective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition (MOEA/D) algorithm is applied to find the nondominated solutions of the proposed collaborative planning model. Finally, simulations based on a 54-node distribution system are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Modern power systems are rapidly evolving into complex cyber-physical systems. The increasingly complex interaction among different energy entities calls for a secure, efficient, and robust cyber infrastructure. As an emerging distributed computing technology, Blockchain provides a secure environment to support such interactions. This paper gives a prospective on using Blockchain as a secure, distributed cyber infrastructure for the future grid. Firstly, the basic principles of Blockchain and its state-of-the-art are introduced. Then, a Blockchain based smart grid cyber-physical infrastructure model is proposed. Afterwards, some promising application domains of Blockchain in future grids are presented. Following this, some potential challenges are discussed.

Two-way communication facilities and advanced metering infrastructure enable residential buildings to be capable of actively participating in demand side management schemes. This paper proposes a new home energy management system (HEMS), which optimally schedules the operation of home energy resources, with the aim to minimize the home’s one-day electricity cost charged by the real-time pricing while taking into account the monthly basis peak power consumption penalty, charged by the demand charge tariff. To better ensure the user’s lifestyle requirements, the HEMS also models lifestyle-related operational dependencies of household appliances. Numerical simulations and case studies are conducted to validate the reasonability of the proposed method.