The Energy-efficiency of demand management technologies and customer’s experience have emerged as important issues as consumers began to heavily adopt these technologies. In this context, where the electrical load imposed on the smart grid by residential users needs to be optimized, it can be better managed when customer’s comfort parameters are used, such as thermal comfort and preferred appliance usage time interval. In this paper a multi-layer architecture is proposed that uses a multi-objective optimization model at the energy consumption level to take consumer comfort and experience into consideration. The paper shows how our proposed Clustered Sequential Management (CSM) approach could improve consumer comfort via appliance use scheduling. To quantify thermal comfort, we use thermodynamic solutions for a Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioner (HVAC) system and then apply our scheduling model to find the best time slot for such thermal loads, linking consumer experience to power consumption. In addition to thermal loads, we also include non-thermal loads in the cost minimization and the enhanced consumer experience. In this hierarchal algorithm, we classified appliances by their load profile including degrees of freedom for consumer appliance prioritization. Finally, we scheduled consumption within a Time of Use (ToU) pricing model. In this model, we used Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) and Linear Programming (LP) optimization for different categories with different constraints for various loads. We eliminate the customer’s inconvenience on thermal load considering ASHRAE standard, increase the satisfaction on EV optimal chagrining constrained by minimum cost and achieve the preferred usage time for the non-interruptible deferrable loads. The results show that our model is typically able to achieve cost minimization almost equal to 13% and Peak-to-Average Ratios (PAR) reduction with almost 45%.

We introduce data-driven and scalable digital twins (DTs) and decentralized observer-based control (DOBC) to enhance inverter synchronization in low-inertia microgrids. The proposed DT, serving as cyber-physical replicas, enables real-time monitoring and data-driven control. We employed the Kuramoto model as a reduced-order dynamic representation of the low inertia inverter-based microgrid. Additionally, we used finite state machines (FSM) to digitally integrate the states and operating modes of virtual oscillator controls (VOC) inverters and microgrid dynamics. To address potential inconsistencies in data acquisition, we implemented generative adversarial imputation nets (GAIN) for the imputation of missing states in real-time. For inverter synchronization and minimizing the control efforts in the presence of the grid topology changes and interruptions, we applied Gramian localized approximation (GLA) and DOBC. These techniques helped us identify an optimal subset of inverters for control. The efficacy of this approach was validated through several scenarios for normal operation and fault isolation cases. The proposed DT model with DOBC significantly reduces synchronization time to under 9 seconds for average to large topology connections, compared to conventional PLL methods requiring around 3 minutes.

Providing equitable and resilient electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) to remote locations with limited access to the Internet infrastructure is one of the paradoxes in the decarbonization plan. In this paper, we develop an electric vehicle (EV) charging management system comprised of offline EVSEs based on a Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) system. To enable offline peer-to-peer (P2P) authentication between the user’s device (UD) and EVSE stations, we use a distributed certificate management based on Shamir’s algorithm and blind signing approach using the ring signature. We introduce extended FBA for charge point operator (FBA-CPO) systems and include explicit operational functions to ensure the ledger dissemination and scalability of the network. We specifically employ a pre-authorized mechanism for deferral vouchers using a pre-signed and weighted signing method. In the FBA-CPO network, each charger records all transactions on a local ledger and publicly publishes ledgers through random UD nodes. Under a generalization of the property of the federated quorum system, the proposed approach could provide a reliable network centrality with or without offline EVSEs. Eventually, we examined the performance of the proposed model using a system of real devices and their digital twins. Results show the FBA-CPO satisfies all functional and cross-cutting requirements for a consistent transnational mechanism.