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A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "A1: Smart Grids and Microgrids".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2019) | Viewed by 37340

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Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Mario Munoz-Organero

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Department of Telematic Engineering, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28911 Madrid, Spain
Interests: wearable technologies for health and wellbeing applications; mobile and pervasive computing for assistive living; Internet of Things and assistive technologies; machine learning algorithms for physiological; inertial and location sensors; personal assistants and coaching for health self-management; activity detection and prediction methods
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The imbrication of computing and communication capabilities into many of the objects that surround us will tend to make our lives easier and more convenient day by day. Thousands of objects in different settings will incorporate computational devices with sensors to monitor the environment and actuators to change it. Interconnected objects will expand the Internet of Things (IoT) everywhere. Cooperating objects able to collaborate in autonomous decision making based on a continuous analysis of the data sensed using artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms will foster the proliferation of smart environments. From home automation to smart factories, from smart cities to smart services such as smart health or smart transportation, from smart grids to autonomous vehicles, the IoT will cover every aspect of our lives via an unprecedented growth in the number of energy consuming computing devices.

This Special Issue will pay special attention to all the energy related aspects making the concepts of the Internet of Things and Smart Environments a viable reality. Topics of interest for publication include, but are not limited to:

IoT architecture and trends
Efficient network communication protocols for smart objects
Energy aware on sensor computing platforms
Energy harvesting
Low energy machine learning algorithms
Energy aware data compression
Sources of energy for the IoT
Energy aware security mechanism
Green IoT
Low energy sensors
Energy based collaboration computing platforms
Trends and architectures
Batteries’ technologies for an IoT

Prof. Dr. Mario Munoz-Organero
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Energy efficient sensors
Energy aware communication protocols
Energy sources for the IoT
Distributed and collaborative platforms for an energy constrained IoT
Energy aware devices in smart environments
Energy harvesting for the IoT
Energy sharing in smart environment
Energy efficient data analysis

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

23 pages, 6520 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Automatic Coordination of Internet-Connected Thermostats for Power Balancing and Frequency Control in Smart Microgrids

by Saeid Bashash and Kai Lun Lee

Energies 2019, 12(10), 1936; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12101936 - 20 May 2019

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2266

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel feedback control strategy, so-called clock-like controller (CLC), to balance power supply and demand in smart microgrids by adjusting the setpoint temperatures of air conditioning (AC) loads. In the CLC algorithm, the grid operator communicates with the individual thermostats via the Internet and adjusts their setpoints by discrete temperature intervals (e.g., ±0.5 °C). Numerical simulations indicate that the proposed algorithm is able to deliver a smooth controllability of the aggregate AC power despite discrete temperature offsets. It can also be used for peak load shedding to mitigate the power generation cost. The CLC algorithm is then integrated into the grid frequency control problem, in which both power generators and loads in the network attempt to regulate the frequency of the system despite disturbances from demand, renewable sources, and local weather conditions. An autonomous microgrid model including a steam and a hydro generator, a solar energy source, and a large number of thermostatic loads is developed to evaluate and demonstrate the proposed method. Simulation results indicate that the AC loads with CLC algorithm can help maintain the power system frequency during extreme events when demand exceeds the maximum generation capacity available to the network. Under normal conditions, the contribution of demand-side control is marginalized by the fast responding generators, because of time delays in the frequency measurement and internet communication network. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things and Smart Environments)

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17 pages, 814 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Research on Network Intrusion Detection Based on Incremental Extreme Learning Machine and Adaptive Principal Component Analysis

by Jianlei Gao, Senchun Chai, Baihai Zhang and Yuanqing Xia

Energies 2019, 12(7), 1223; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12071223 - 29 Mar 2019

Cited by 61 | Viewed by 4774

Abstract

Recently, network attacks launched by malicious attackers have seriously affected modern life and enterprise production, and these network attack samples have the characteristic of type imbalance, which undoubtedly increases the difficulty of intrusion detection. In response to this problem, it would naturally be very meaningful to design an intrusion detection system (IDS) to effectively and quickly identify and detect malicious behaviors. In our work, we have proposed a method for an IDS-combined incremental extreme learning machine (I-ELM) with an adaptive principal component (A-PCA). In this method, the relevant features of network traffic are adaptively selected, where the best detection accuracy can then be obtained by I-ELM. We have used the NSL-KDD standard dataset and UNSW-NB15 standard dataset to evaluate the performance of our proposed method. Through analysis of the experimental results, we can see that our proposed method has better computation capacity, stronger generalization ability, and higher accuracy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things and Smart Environments)

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16 pages, 1043 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Economic Efficiency of the Internet of Things Solution in the Energy Industry: A Very High Voltage Frosting Case Study

by Milos Maryska, Petr Doucek, Pavel Sladek and Lea Nedomova

Energies 2019, 12(4), 585; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12040585 - 13 Feb 2019

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2884

Abstract

This article deals with the deployment of an Internet of Things (IoT) technology within the energy industry (energy distribution) in the Czech Republic. The first part of the article is devoted to an assessment of the perspectives for developing IoT applications and implementing them within the economy, and then examines how the principles of multi-criteria decision-making are used to select IoT technologies for deployment in the energy industry. The selection of technology is also followed by the selection of the specific application with the highest potential benefit for the company using such a method to select the technology. The selection solution is demonstrated and further discussed from the technological and financial standpoints and illustrated via the example of choosing among two alternatives for a real-world application, very high voltage (VHV) frosting (in electric power transmission engineering, which is usually considered as any voltage between 52,000 and 300,000 V). The application solution is analyzed by how it relates to the direct vs indirect measurement of glaze ice. The result of this technical and financial analysis was that the direct glaze ice measurement variant is clearly the more advantageous one. The direct-measurement variant has a three-year payoff period, compared to six years for indirect measurement. Further, the benefits from the direct-measurement variant are 2.25 times larger than the other variant, and the five-year net profit value amounts to a profit for the direct-measurement variant while it results in a financial loss for the indirect-measurement variant. The recommended variant is to measure the icing of VHV lines directly. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things and Smart Environments)

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29 pages, 5046 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Study on Improvement of Blockchain Application to Overcome Vulnerability of IoT Multiplatform Security

by Seong-Kyu Kim, Ung-Mo Kim and Jun-Ho Huh

Energies 2019, 12(3), 402; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12030402 - 27 Jan 2019

Cited by 51 | Viewed by 8572

Abstract

IoT devices are widely used in the smart home, automobile, and aerospace areas. Note, however, that recent information on thefts and hacking have given rise to many problems. The aim of this study is to overcome the security weaknesses of existing Internet of Things (IoT) devices using Blockchain technology, which is a recent issue. This technology is used in Machine-to-Machine (M2M) access payment—KYD (Know Your Device)—based on the reliability of existing IoT devices. Thus, this paper proposes a BoT (Blockchain of Things) ecosystem to overcome problems related to the hacking risk of IoT devices to be introduced, such as logistics management and history management. There are also many security vulnerabilities in the sensor multi-platform from the IoT point of view. In this paper, we propose a model that solves the security vulnerability in the sensor multi-platform by using blockchain technology on an empirical model. The color spectrum chain mentioned in this paper suggests a blockchain technique completed by using the multiple-agreement algorithm to enhance Thin-Plate Spline (TPS) performance and measure various security strengths. In conclusion, we propose a radix of the blockchain’s core algorithm to overcome the weaknesses of sensor devices such as automobile, airplane, and close-circuit television (CCTV) using blockchain technology. Because all IoT devices use wireless technology, they have a fundamental weakness over wired networks. Sensors are exposed to hacking and sensor multi-platforms are vulnerable to security by multiple channels. In addition, since IoT devices have a lot of security weaknesses we intend to show the authentication strength of security through the color spectrum chain and apply it to sensor and multi-platform using Blockchain in the future. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things and Smart Environments)

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22 pages, 6015 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Study on the Improvement of Smart Grid Security Performance and Blockchain Smart Grid Perspective

by Seong-Kyu Kim and Jun-Ho Huh

Energies 2018, 11(8), 1973; https://doi.org/10.3390/en11081973 - 30 Jul 2018

Cited by 80 | Viewed by 9335

Abstract

Interest in green energy has increased worldwide. Therefore, smart grid projects to form a more efficient and eco-friendly intelligent grid by combining information technology (IT) technology with the existing grid are actively being conducted. In Korea, a national-level smart grid project road map has been confirmed, and an action plan has been prepared. Despite such actions, there may appear various threat scenarios in the application of the IT to the grid as a reverse function. Security technology is a measure to respond to such threats effectively. The security technology of a smart grid is an important factor that is directly related to the success or failure of the smart grid project. A smart grid is a new type of next-generation grid born of the fusion with IT. If the smart grid, the backbone of the power supply, is damaged by a cyberattack, it may cause huge damage, such as a nationwide power outage. In fact, there is an increasing cyberattack threat, and the cyber security threat to the smart grid is not insignificant. Furthermore, the legal system related to information protection is also important in order to support it systematically. In this paper, the necessity of the smart grid is examined, and the industry’s initiative toward the smart grid security threat and threat response is examined. In this paper, we also suggest a security plan of applying Rainbowchain, the Blockchain technology, to the smart grid and energy exchange. We propose achieving superior performance and security functions by using Rainbowchain, which contains seven authentication techniques among existing Blockchain technologies, and propose the ecosystem and architecture necessary for its application. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things and Smart Environments)

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28 pages, 685 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Multi-Agent Systems Applications in Energy Optimization Problems: A State-of-the-Art Review

by Alfonso González-Briones, Fernando De La Prieta, Mohd Saberi Mohamad, Sigeru Omatu and Juan M. Corchado

Energies 2018, 11(8), 1928; https://doi.org/10.3390/en11081928 - 24 Jul 2018

Cited by 103 | Viewed by 8706

Abstract

This article reviews the state-of-the-art developments in Multi-Agent Systems (MASs) and their application to energy optimization problems. This methodology and related tools have contributed to changes in various paradigms used in energy optimization. Behavior and interactions between agents are key elements that must be understood in order to model energy optimization solutions that are robust, scalable and context-aware. The concept of MAS is introduced in this paper and it is compared with traditional approaches in the development of energy optimization solutions. The different types of agent-based architectures are described, the role played by the environment is analysed and we look at how MAS recognizes the characteristics of the environment to adapt to it. Moreover, it is discussed how MAS can be used as tools that simulate the results of different actions aimed at reducing energy consumption. Then, we look at MAS as a tool that makes it easy to model and simulate certain behaviors. This modeling and simulation is easily extrapolated to the energy field, and can even evolve further within this field by using the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. Therefore, we can argue that MAS is a widespread approach in the field of energy optimization and that it is commonly used due to its capacity for the communication, coordination, cooperation of agents and the robustness that this methodology gives in assigning different tasks to agents. Finally, this article considers how MASs can be used for various purposes, from capturing sensor data to decision-making. We propose some research perspectives on the development of electrical optimization solutions through their development using MASs. In conclusion, we argue that researchers in the field of energy optimization should use multi-agent systems at those junctures where it is necessary to model energy efficiency solutions that involve a wide range of factors, as well as context independence that they can achieve through the addition of new agents or agent organizations, enabling the development of energy-efficient solutions for smart cities and intelligent buildings. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things and Smart Environments)

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