In the last years, the research efforts in smart grids (SG) and telecommunication networks (TN) have been considerable but never converged to a common view and, due to the lack of strong interactions between the two worlds, only limited benefits have been achieved. We envision in this paper that future TN (as well as any other ICT application) will interact with the SG, enabling (1) the TN to know the energy source and cost that is currently powering its equipment, (2) to turn the TN into an active client which can request to the SG the quantity and quality (e.g. green) of energy that it needs, and (3) a service orchestration between SG supply system and TN operations. As a consequence, the enabled interoperability between TN and SG would allow TN to take energy-aware management decisions in function of energy-related information provided by the SG. For example, TN can route packets with the objective of optimizing green criteria, while SG can route the energy towards the TN clients with the objective of not wasting surpluses of green energy. These new energy and data routing capabilities can be exploited not only by SG operators and telecom carriers but also by any energy consumer/producer within the ICT world. This may include industry and institutional ICT premises, datacenters, home automation, wireless and mobile cellular networks, which will be able to implement their own energy-aware management and operations (M&O) by considering the quantity, quality and cost of the energy currently provided by the smart grid.

Peer Reviewed