This book addresses the emerging trend of smart grids in power systems. It discusses the advent of smart grids and selected technical implications; further, by combining the perspectives of researchers from Europe and South America, the book captures the status quo of and approaches to smart grids in a wide range of countries. It describes the basic concepts, enabling readers to understand the theoretical aspects behind smart grid formation, while also examining current challenges and philosophical discussions.
Like the industrial revolution and the birth of the Internet, smart grids are certain to change the way people use electricity. In this regard, a new term – the “prosumer” – is used to describe consumers who may sometimes also be energy producers. This is particularly appealing if we bear in mind that most of the distributed power generation in smart grids does not involve carbon emissions.
At first glance, the option of generating their own power couldmove consumers to leave their current energy provider. Yet the authors argue that doing so is not a wise choice: utilities will play a central role in this new scenario and should not be ignored.
- Prof. Dr. Antonio Carlos Zambroni de Souza received the B.Eng. degree in electrical engineering in 1987 from the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering in 1990 from the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering in 1995 from the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada. He is currently a full Professor at the Federal University of Itajubá, Brazil. In 2000, he was a visitor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. In 2008 he was a visiting professor at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland. In 2014 he was a visiting professor at the Polytechnic University of Cataluña, Spain.
- Prof. Dr. Miguel Castilla is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering, Technical University of Catalonia, Spain, since 2002. He has written 49 journal articles and more than 100 conference articles. The quality factors associated to these publications are (source Scopus): 1) total number of citations: 5896; 2) average number of citations per year during the last 10 years: 571; 3) h-index: 26. He is the editor of the book
Control Circuits in Power Electronics: Practical Issues in Design and Implementation, IET, 2016.
