A smart grid (SG) is a modernized electric grid that enhances the reliability, efficiency, sustainability, and economics of electricity services. Moreover, it plays a vital role in modern energy infrastructure. The core challenge faced by SGs is how to efficiently utilize different kinds of front-end smart devices, such as smart meters and power assets, and in what manner to process the enormous volume of data received from these devices. Furthermore, cloud and fog computing provide on-demand resources for computation, which is a good solution to overcome SG hurdles. Fog-based cloud computing has numerous good characteristics, such as cost-saving, energy-saving, scalability, flexibility, and agility. Resource management is one of the big issues in SGs. In this paper, we propose a cloud–fog–based model for resource management in SGs. The key idea of the proposed work is to determine a hierarchical structure of cloud–fog computing to provide different types of computing services for SG resource management. Regarding the performance enhancement of cloud computing, different load balancing techniques are used. For load balancing between an SG user’s requests and service providers, five algorithms are implemented: round robin, throttled, artificial bee colony (ABC), ant colony optimization (ACO), and particle swarm optimization. Moreover, we propose a hybrid approach of ACO and ABC known as hybrid artificial bee ant colony optimization (HABACO). Simulation results show that our proposed technique HABACO outperformed the other techniques.

In this paper, we propose a demand side management (DSM) scheme in the residential area for electricity cost and peak to average ratio (PAR) alleviation with maximum users’ satisfaction. For this purpose, we implement state-of-the-art algorithms: enhanced differential evolution (EDE) and teacher learning-based optimization (TLBO). Furthermore, we propose a hybrid technique (HT) having the best features of both aforementioned algorithms. We consider a system model for single smart home as well as for a community (multiple homes) and each home consists of multiple appliances with different priorities. The priority is assigned (to each appliance) by electricity consumers and then the proposed scheme finds an optimal solution according to the assigned priorities. Day-ahead real time pricing (DA-RTP) and critical peak pricing (CPP) are used for electricity cost calculation. To validate our proposed scheme, simulations are carried out and results show that our proposed scheme efficiently achieves the aforementioned objectives. However, when we perform a comparison with existing schemes, HT outperforms other state-of-the-art schemes (TLBO and EDE) in terms of electricity cost and PAR reduction while minimizing the average waiting time.

An unprecedented opportunity is presented by smart grid technologies to shift the energy industry into the new era of availability, reliability and efficiency that will contribute to our economic and environmental health. Renewable energy sources play a significant role in making environments greener and generating electricity at a cheaper cost. The cloud/fog computing also contributes to tackling the computationally intensive tasks in a smart grid. This work proposes an energy efficient approach to solve the energy management problem in the fog based environment. We consider a small community that consists of multiple smart homes. A microgrid is installed at each residence for electricity generation. Moreover, it is connected with the fog server to share and store information. Smart energy consumers are able to share the details of excess energy with each other through the fog server. The proposed approach is validated through simulations in terms of cost and imported electricity alleviation.

This paper presents a model for optimal energy management under the time-of-use (ToU) and critical peak price (CPP) market in a microgrid. The microgrid consists of intermittent dispatchable distributed generators, energy storage systems, and multi-home load demands. The optimal energy management problem is a challenging task due to the inherent stochastic behavior of the renewable energy resources. In the past, medium-sized distributed energy resource generation was injected into the main grid with no feasible control mechanism to prevent the waste of power generated by a distributed energy resource which has no control mechanism, especially when the grid power limit is altered. Thus, a Jaya-based optimization method is proposed to shift dispatchable distributed generators within the ToU and CPP scheduling horizon. The proposed model coordinates the power supply of the microgrid components, and trades with the main grid to reduce its fuel costs, production costs, and also maximize the monetary profit from sales revenue. The proposed method is implemented on two microgrid operations: the standalone and grid-connected modes. The simulation results are compared with other optimization methods: enhanced differential evolution (EDE) and strawberry algorithm (SBA). Finally, simulation results show that the Jaya-based optimization method minimizes the fuel cost by up to 38.13%, production cost by up to 93.89%, and yields a monetary benefit of up to 72.78% from sales revenue.

In this paper, a demand side management (DSM) scheme is used to make energy utilization more efficient. The DSM scheme encourages the consumer to change energy utilization patterns which benefit the utility. In return, the consumer gets some incentives from the utility. The objectives of the proposed DSM system include: electricity bill reduction, reduced peak to average ratio (PAR), and maximization of consumer comfort. In the proposed system, the electrical devices are scheduled by using elephant herding optimization (EHO) and adaptive cuckoo search (ACS) algorithms. Moreover, a new algorithm called hybrid elephant adaptive cuckoo (HEAC) is proposed which uses the features of both former algorithms. A comparison of these algorithms is also presented in terms of three performance parameters. The HEAC shows better performance as compared to EHO and ACS which is evident from the simulation results. Different electricity tariffs are introduced by the utility to provide incentives to the consumers. A regional based time of use (ToU) tariff is used to make the system effective for different types of regions. Moreover, this enables the consumers to act according to the regional environment. The coordination can play a very important role in cost reduction as well as in consumer comfort maximization. The coordination is incorporated among the electrical devices by using cooperative game theory (GT) and dynamic programming (DP). Extensive simulations are performed to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in terms of electricity utilization cost, PAR reduction, and consumer comfort maximization.