An Investigation into Pricing Policies in Smart Grids

One achievement in smart grids is the construction of smart cities. In this kind of city houses are equipped with smart meters that can record electric energy as well as transmit and accept data regarding energy utilization and prices to consumers. Additionally, new methods, known as real-time pricing of electricity, have been introduced in which energy prices change based on an hourly timeline and depend on consumers’ energy requests. Due to the production of electricity by PV panels, a smart grid will share the surplus of the energy provided by the panels to the grid. These pricing policies will force and encourage consumers to track their power consumption and use renewable energies. In this paper, the impacts of pricing policy on the reduction in consumers’ power consumption are investigated. A small-scale smart city is presented and a policy is applied to it. Additionally, an implementation through a simulation of some houses equipped with renewable energy sources is done to study their effect on the grid performance.