The rapid growth of new technologies in power systems requires real-time monitoring and control of bidirectional data communication and electric power flow. Cloud computing has centralized architecture and is not scalable towards the emerging internet of things (IoT) landscape of the grid. Further, under large-scale integration of renewables, this framework could be bogged down by congestion, latency, and subsequently poor quality of service (QoS). This calls for a distributed architecture called fog computing, which imbibes both clouds as well as the end-devices to collect, process, and act upon the data locally at the edge for low latency applications prior to forwarding them to the cloud for more complex operations. Fog computing offers high performance and interoperability, better scalability and visibility, and greater availability in comparison to a grid relying only on the cloud. In this chapter, a prospective research roadmap, future challenges, and opportunities to apply fog computing on smart grid systems is presented.
The influence of alternative sources on the efficiency of smart grid systems on campus buildings
