THE SMART POWER GRID
The smart grid is the next generation of the power grid network and is built upon a bi-directional communication platform between the user and the utility. The basic elements of the smart grid are the smart buildings that incorporate an agent Central Processing Unit (CPU) connected to Home Area Network (HAN) of sensors/actuators, the controllers (or supervisors) that manage a set of agents, the utility and the service provider [6, 8], as shown in Fig. 1. The communication between agents and controllers is supported by Neighbourhood Area Networks (NAN) or Wide Area Networks (WAN) [8]. Command flow between the utility, the controller and the smart buildings is responsible for energy management, load control, load “shave,” etc.