Smart grids, prosumers and energy management within a smart city integrated system

Due to a significant increase in electricity consumption globally, governments have to look and to identify better, more efficient and effective alternatives and sustainable energy sources to meet this high demand. This becomes more and more important in the context of implementing modern approaches such as those that might be applied in cases of smart cities and cultural and creative communities. Electricity can be produced based on conventional sources, but also on an emergent use of renewable sources. The electricity grid is usually designed as unidirectional. We consider that in case of smart cities and creative-innovative communities there is a need to implement mostly new smart grids that are bidirectional. This may allow and support the emergency of a new type of electricity user, called “prosumers”, who produces electricity from renewable sources, next uses & shares them smartly within the smart grid and finally stores them. Globally, photovoltaic energy prosumers are considered one of the most important actors in the energy transition and seem to be ready to introduce significant amounts of electricity within the grid. We anticipate that people living in households in smart cities and communities among most regions of the world will tend in the future to improve their self-consumption from the production of smart energy. This paper supports the idea that using mostly electricity from renewable alternative sources, especially solar, can be also developed with the help of households acting within smart cities and communities. The paper will also present briefly an overview of the scientific literature dedicated to this topic. We will also provide further interesting insights through a number of case studies representing good practices regarding prosumers in Italy and Romania.