A smart city is a new concept of cities thatapply the new generation of information communication technologies (Smart ICT), such as the Internet-of-Things, cloud computing,big data, to improve and manage the planning, construction and smart services ofcities. Developing Smart Cities can benefit synchronized development,industrialization, information sharing, urbanization and agriculturalmodernization and sustainability of cities development. The utility powersystem in smart City is highly energy and resource efficient, and is increasingly powered by renewable energy sources; it relies onintegrated and resilient resource systems, as well as insight-driven and innovative approaches to strategic planning. The application of information andcommunication technologies is commonly a means to meet these objectives. One ofthe major components of smart cities’ utility power system is the smart grid.
The smart grid is an electrical grid including a variety of operational andenergy measures such as smart meters, smart appliances and allows theintegration of various power generation resources. As reported by the Energy InformationAdministration, the energy provided by fossil fuels accounts for 62% of thetotal global energy consumption, 38% worldwide energy generation comes fromrenewables energies. Furthermore, the worldwide energy consumption is expectedto increase 82% in the following decade. Withthe increasing concerns about climate change the interest in integratingrenewable resources into the smart grid increases. As these renewable energysources might be highly intermittent in nature and often uncontrollable, theycould produce a significant challenge for the reliability of the grid. It istherefore a challenging task to guarantee that the power demand, load and power generation remain balanced;stressing the need for standardised power allocation and dynamic pricingschemes.
There are many challenges and opportunities of emerging and futuresmart grids and smart cities, which can be addressed by means of cloudcomputing. For instance, dynamic energy pricing, i.e., shifting the potentialpeak demand to a different time when the energy price is lower. A cloud-basedplatform will be instrumental in minimizing network complexity and providingcost-effective solutions as well as increasing the utilization of energy. Smartgrid and smart city services/applications may be deployed in various ways, suchas in a private cloud, community cloud, or hybrid cloud. As a step into this direction, we study dynamic pricingstrategies for brokering, which will be implemented on the cloud service, basedupon data collected from smart meters to help the users make the best selectionwith the energy resources from different energy retailers. In this dynamicpricing scheme, more than one energy retailer isconsidered and for each retailer, the price for the users can be adjusted dynamically depending on the current energydemand and prices offered by the other retailers ineach region; in order to achieve the highest individual or combined revenue.
Theusers’ energy demand changes with the price to maximize their individual utility, and users might choose different retailers based onthe provided prices. The brokering will choose the lowest cost of energyresources based on clients’ energy usage demand in real time. Dynamic pricingaims at reducing the overall energy consumption, the capacity of end usecustomers to change their electricity usage from their normal or current consumption patterns in response to market signals is mainly about shifting consumption to a different point in time.
Furthermore, during the analysis, we have come to know thatstandardization in the area of metering and billing lags behind research.Therefore, in our study we focus on researching the market requirements forcloud service metering and billing to highlight and determine gaps betweenindustry practices, market requirements and current technical standardisationefforts at ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 38 committee in order to pave the way toestablishing standards in metering indicators and billing principles for cloudservices this while keeping in mind privacy and data protection risks andregulations enforced by ISO JT1/SC 27 and EU General Data Protection Regulationeffective May 2018. Key words: Smart Cities, Smart Meter, Dynamic Pricing,Technical Standardisation, Cloud Computing This research was conducted in collaboration with ILNAS -the Institut Luxembourgeois de la Normalisation, de l’Accréditation, de laSécurité et qualité des produits et services (ILNAS) under the authority of theMinister of Economy, Luxembourg.
