State-of-the-Art Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Distributed Smart Grids: A Review

The power system worldwide is going through a revolutionary transformation due to the integration with various distributed components, including advanced metering infrastructure, communication infrastructure, distributed energy resources, and electric vehicles, to improve the reliability, energy efficiency, management, and security of the future power system. These components are becoming more tightly integrated with IoT. They are expected to generate a vast amount of data to support various applications in the smart grid, such as distributed energy management, generation forecasting, grid health monitoring, fault detection, home energy management, etc. With these new components and information, artificial intelligence techniques can be applied to automate and further improve the performance of the smart grid. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art artificial intelligence techniques to support various applications in a distributed smart grid. In particular, we discuss how artificial techniques are applied to support the integration of renewable energy resources, the integration of energy storage systems, demand response, management of the grid and home energy, and security. As the smart grid involves various actors, such as energy produces, markets, and consumers, we also discuss how artificial intelligence and market liberalization can potentially help to increase the overall social welfare of the grid. Finally, we provide further research challenges for large-scale integration and orchestration of automated distributed devices to realize a truly smart grid.