A smart grid is a digitally enabled electrical grid that gathers, distributes, and acts on information about the behavior of all participants (suppliers and consumers) in order to improve the efficiency, importance, reliability, economics, and sustainability of electricity services. Moreover, as smart grids continue to support traditional power loads they also seamlessly interconnect fuel cells, renewables, micro-turbines, and other distributed generation technologies at local and regional levels. Integration of small-scale, localized, or on-site power generation allows residential, commercial, and industrial customers to self-generate and sell excess power to the grid with minimal technical or regulatory barriers. However, Smart grids require an important change in the infrastructure which represents a high cost that is difficult to cover in the short term. As phovoltaics has been regarded as a key technology for global warming mitigation in Japan, research is being done considering that the increase of PV’s into the grid could cause problems that threatens the stability and quality of the electric power system. To resolve this issues, this laboratory researches on energy management on residential area and the possibility of battery storage installation to deal with the energy surplus generated during the day which is later demanded on the evening. Some of the research topics are: “Evaluation of the effect of batteries in district level smart grid” “Household electricity simulation: demand, the electricity generation and demand-supply control methods”.

.