Green Middleware

To foster innovation, address energy independence, react to global warming, and increase emergency resiliency, governments around the world are promoting efforts to modernize electricity networks by instigating smart grid, e-energy and e-mobility initiatives [5, 6, 3, 4]. A smart grid refers to efforts that enhance and extend today’s electric power grids with information processing technology to more efficiently use the world’s scarcest resource, energy [6]. A smart grid is envisioned to deliver electricity from suppliers to consumers guided by information communication technology (ICT) with two-way communications to monitor and control appliances and devices at consumers’ homes, save energy and reduce emissions, increase reliability and transparency, and use distributed energy storage to level electricity supply and demand during peak and off-peak periods [6]. Smart grids also envision the integration of renewable and distributed energy resources, such as photovoltaic, wind, hydro, and tidal sources, in pursuit of the above outlined goals [2]. A smart grid overlays the electrical power grid with a massively distributed information systems infrastructure for large-scale monitoring and fine-grained control of all elements involved in the energy production and consumption pipeline. These elements can include energy generation, storage, transmission, distribution, and consumption. A smart grid ensures the secure, reliable and cost-effective flow of energy from distributed energy sources to energy consumers.