SMART GRID ENERGY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS: CONTROL MECHANISMS FOR ELECTRICITY DEMAND

The paper deals with the mechanisms that can be used to optimize electricity consumption both within an oil processing plant and across multiple plants in a production site. Assuming that the production plants are using energy management controllers (EMCs) to control the operation of some of their equipment, we demonstrate, using simulation, that some solutions may in fact be more peaky than the "non-scheduled" solution, thereby negating some of the benefits (for the utility) of off-peak pricing models. In the end of the paper, a distributed scheduling mechanism to reduce peak demand within a whole production site is presented as an optimal solution.