Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 129 (2016) 74–83

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Computers and Electronics in Agriculture

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compag

Original papers

Smart energy for smart irrigation

Antonia Nasiakou a, Manolis Vavalis b,⇑, Dimitris Zimeris b
a
Purdue University, Nuclear Engineering Department, United States
b
University of Thessaly, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Greece

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper investigates the possibility of reducing the cost of irrigation by utilizing techniques, methods
Received 28 January 2016 and practices that are common to the smart energy systems. A software platform that couples the smart-
Received in revised form 8 September 2016 ness of the irrigation systems with the smartness of the energy systems is designed, implemented and
Accepted 10 September 2016
evaluated. The resulting simulation engine allows large scale and very detailed experimentation where
Available online 29 September 2016
irrigation experts specify energy effective configurations that lead to the reduction of the irrigation cost
through smart utilization of Renewable Energy Sources (RES).
Keywords:
Ó 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Energy
Agriculture
Renewable
Irrigation
Microgrid

1. Introduction transactions and seamless interfaces among people, buildings, indus-

Irrigation has been around for as long as humans have been cul-
tivating plants. Irrigation procedures mainly depend on the water
availability, while water requirement is the main parameter for
calculating equivalent energy demand.
Direct coupling of agricultural processes with RES have been
considered for centuries. In principle, it reduces energy cost, by
consuming the free energy offered by RES and often going off the
grid, in a micro-grid form or as energy autarky islands (Hiatt
et al., 2011).
Water use efficiency and energy use efficiency are the main
focuses of two recent innovations known with the, surely over-
loaded terms smart irrigation and smart grid. The already existing
and rapidly emerging smart irrigation systems (for example http://
waterbee.iris.cat) offer significant water savings. They commonly
consist of an agriculture model that based on data from a wireless
network of sensors controls the operation of irrigation in a rather
precise manner. It is no surprise that there is no unique definition
of the Smart Grid. Our study is based on the following definition
provided by the U.S. Department of Energy. Smart grid is a fully
automated power delivery network that monitors and controls every
customer and node, ensuring a two-way flow of electricity and infor-
mation between the power plant and the appliance, and all points in
between. Its distributed intelligence, coupled with broadband commu-
nications and automated control systems, enables real-time market
trial plants, generation facilities, and the electric network.
Agricultural activities involve several important, from the
energy viewpoint, sectors. However, the formation of a robust
and sustainable electrical power grid allows the utilization of RES
to cover the energy needs of these sectors. This leads to their elec-
trical autarky1 which remains a very challenging problem. The
imposed challenges depend on several characteristics associated
with various issues varying from the legal requirements, to the effect
of the various topological and land-use parameters.
There are many applications that may benefit from a balanced
energy/agricultural system. These include: heat produced through
solar and biomass technologies and consumed for crop drying,
greenhouse, livestock farms and water heating, electricity pro-
duced through solar, biomass, wind and hydro based technologies
and consumed for water pumping (wells, ponds, streams), irriga-
tion sprinklers, controls, security and task lighting, ventilation,
feed or product handling, equipment, refrigeration, battery charg-
ing, air condition, compressors for fish farming, fans for crop dry-
ing, greenhouse heating, etc.
The main objective of this paper is to provide a practical tool
that allows us to elucidate several issues concerning the various
characteristics of the coupling of smart grid with smart irrigation.
More specifically, a simulation approach based on RES (solar pan-
els, wind turbines) installations for serving agricultural and when
needed residential loads is proposed. This approach utilizes a

1
Autarky is the state of an organization that is sufficient for satisfying its energy
⇑ Corresponding author. needs and forbids any import of energy from the power grid.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2016.09.008
0168-1699/Ó 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 A. Nasiakou et al. / Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 129 (2016) 74–83
software platform capable of simulating technical and financial
aspects of the proposed installation. The authors design and
develop a prototype implementation of such a platform and use
it for our initial experimentation which indicates that the irrigation
and to a great extent the agricultural sector, can potentially be a
very challenging area of RES research and development, especially
when liberalized auction-based energy market is involved.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 the
related efforts that motivate our study and develop the appropriate
background are presented. In Section 3 the system design is con-
sidered and in Section 4 the main features of GridLAB-D are
described in detail. Section 5 contains the main characteristics of
our prototype implementation and the proposed integrated
system. Associated elementary simulation results are given in
Section 6 and our concluding remarks are presented in Section 7.
2. State of the art
Several agricultural projects around the globe emphasize on the
need for further research and development towards the improve-
ment of irrigation applications, in terms of better energy manage-
ment and reduced cost. Below the ones that are of importance to
our efforts are presented.
A sizing procedure for calculating the variables involved in a
solar panel installation for agricultural processes is presented in
Morales and Busch (2010). Vick and Almas (2011) proposes meth-
ods for the irrigation management via a central coordinator. Based
on several parameters, this coordinator suggests various alterna-
tive implementations involving solar and/or wind energy, also tak-
ing advantage of storage ability of excess energy and water storage
in surface reservoirs for future irrigation and other on-farm uses. It
proposes a partitioning of the irrigation system between a winter
crop and a summer crop that leads to an improved match between
the wind turbine and the PV solar array power generation required
for water pumping applications. The design and the operation of
such an application depends on a set of crucial parameters that
includes monthly energy demand for different crops, the size of
wind turbine or/and PV array, the average monthly evapotranspi-
ration, the average monthly rainfall, average hourly wind speed
for different heights, average monthly air density, power curve
and many others.
Similar to the above, Stambouli et al. (2014) presents a modern-
ized irrigation system, already in operation, coordinated by a cen-
tral management operator. The central system involves elementary
remote control that manages the automated frequency controlled
pumping stations, while an on-demand program schedules irriga-
tion processes for different farms. More specifically, it collects
the desired schedule in terms of irrigation hours and days of the
week and adjusts the pumping system and piping network opera-
tion by opening hydrants and valves accordingly. A district central
managing office is responsible for paying all the electricity and
maintenance expenses, which then distributes them according to
the total water volume consumed by each farm.
Among other papers, Shivrath et al. (2012), Glasnovic and
Margeta (2009) and Kelley et al. (2010) present sizing and opti-
mization algorithms focusing on evaluating technical (dependent
on soil, climate, geography, agriculture, and hydro-geology) as well
as economical (dependent on the electricity price, life cycle cost of
investment) feasibility of solar and/or wind energy installations for
irrigation purposes. More specifically, in Kelley et al. (2010) a tech-
nical and an economic feasibility analysis for PV solar irrigation
systems is performed, in order to emphasize the use of solar energy
for irrigating purposes compared to conventional diesel engine as
well as grid powered irrigation systems. It is based on an analytical
mathematical model, in a way that can be applicable to any
75
geographic location and crop type. Technical feasibility is deter-
mined from the maximum power required for irrigation purposes
which highly depends on the crop type and the geographic loca-
tion. On the other hand, economic feasibility is determined in
terms of life-cycle costs of the PV solar irrigation system compared
to diesel and grid based irrigation systems. The results exhibit that
the success of a PV solar application depends on the size of the
overall farming size and the variations of the irrigation needs.
The results from the economic feasibility analysis illustrate the
superiority of PV solar applications compared to the diesel-
engine and grid powered irrigation systems, despite the high cap-
ital costs of PV systems. As the price of solar panels decreases, the
PV irrigation systems become more and more economically attrac-
tive. Several examples cases are examined, showing the benefits of
the PVP applications compared to other system types.
In Glasnovic and Margeta (2009), two Croatian regions with dif-
ferent hydrogeological and meteorological data are examined. It
presents a systematic approach in sizing as well as optimizing a
PV solar array system. Considering a whole range of factors, cli-
mate, soil, hydrological and agricultural a mathematical model uti-
lizing dynamic programming for optimal sizing is derived. This
model is formulated as an objective function couples with a set
of constraints in terms of the factors mentioned above. Further-
more, a major effort is devoted to show how and in what extent
these factors influence the determination of financially acceptable
plant areas for irrigation purposes. The results obtained for two
regions, one with continental climate and the other with coastal
climate can be summarized as follows: warmer climates with
increased temperature and solar radiation require larger water
quantities for irrigation since they have the drawback of increased
evapotranspiration.
Shivrath et al. (2012) proposes a design and an optimization
process of the cost of a hybrid wind/solar renewable system for
drip irrigation purposes, based on various operating and design
parameters. These design parameters are the pumping system
specifications as well as the drip irrigation specifications. Meteoro-
logical data concerning the design of both the solar PV system and
the wind turbine system are also utilized for sizing purposes.
Finally, a battery bank calculation is presented. The cost optimiza-
tion procedure is formulated by an objective function for minimiz-
ing a particular cost function consisting of the optimum number of
solar panels and wind turbines, subjected to certain limitations and
constraints obtained by the pumping and irrigation specification
and requirements. The proposed design and optimization algo-
rithm is executed on Microsoft Office Excel 2007. The authors con-
clude that when combined, solar and wind renewable sources
enhance the reliability of the system, and lead to battery bank
reduction increasing its lifetime.
Vishwa et al. (2015) is an up-to-day literature review of PV solar
water pumping systems for irrigation purposes. The advantages of
solar water pumps are illustrated compared to hand pumps or
internal combustion engine pumps, that is, easy installation, zero
maintenance, long useful life, no fuel, no contamination. It is
shown that compared to diesel powered water pumps, solar pow-
ered pumping systems are less expensive over a life cycle of
10 years. This review focuses on specific issues like the evaluation,
monitoring and performance improvement of the different compo-
nents of a PV system. It considers.
1. the dependency of the irrigation process on soil type, PV system
sizing for the particular crop considered.
2. Meteorological data such as solar radiation air temperature,
wind speed, and relative humidity.
3. Operational specifications like irrigation scheduling from which
water requirements converted into electrical energy
requirements.
76 A. Nasiakou et al. / Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 129 (2016) 74–83
Martin and Levine (2007) contains a feasibility study concern-
ing the renewable energy generation by PV solar panels and its
storage for agricultural use in the San Luis Valley in California. Cost
estimates, including rebates and incentives as well as payback per-
iod are evaluated and summarized. Crop irrigation water require-
ments results are used for the estimation of size of the PV solar
array. A potato crop as the base case scenario, requiring approxi-
mately 12 inches of water per season, is considered. The growing
season is assumed from April through August. Four major energy
storage techniques are illustrated, namely, pumped water storage,
compressed air storage, battery bank storage and grid storage. Two
motor pumps are evaluated, a DC driven motor pump and an AC
driven motor pump, with the later to be, as expected, the most
practical solution.
Following the water storage concept, the authors of Martin and
Levine (2007) present in Martin (2007) an alternative method. The
so-called underground pump hydroelectric storage (UPHS) is based
on an agricultural well and an underground aquifer with a for-
ward/backward water flow. The system includes an intermittent
renewable energy source for pumping water, a surface water stor-
age reservoir for irrigation and power generation water, a com-
bined pump-turbine motor-generator unit and a system control
interface. The alternative to the surface reservoir is the under-
ground reservoir where of course such reservoir is geologically
available. This new concept has the form of the aquifer recharge
(AR) and aquifer storage and recharge (ASR) wells that already
exist in California. These types of wells are designed to replace
water in an aquifer by performing a backwards water flow into a
water well leading to an aquifer recharge. The basic principle of
the latter idea is that water is traditionally pumped from the down
aquifer by means of a renewable resource. The pumped water is
stored in an upper underground well or in the surface reservoir.
This water is used for the irrigation system when it is needed.
When it is not needed, this water can be released from the upper
underground or surface reservoir back to the down aquifer, revers-
ing the operation of the motor and pump to generate electricity by
reversing the pump operation with a turbine operation and the
motor operation with the generator operation. To implement such
a system, a pump-turbine coupled with an electrical motor-
generator is installed as a single unit at the bottom of the well.
To improve turbine efficiency, a reasonable height is assumed
between the surface or underground upper reservoir and the down
aquifer. UPHS systems can either be used with the standard utility
power or for use with the engaged renewable energy sources. Even
with only the central utility grid, the user can derive economical
benefits by storing energy during the ‘‘off-peak” hours (when irri-
gation is not in operation) and releasing the generated energy on
demand avoiding the cost of the ‘‘on-peak” hours where utility
electricity tends to be more expensive.
Arruda et al. (2015) investigates the effectiveness of a wind/so-
lar power system with a battery bank for water pumping. The sys-
tem involves a wind turbine, four PV solar panels, five electrolytic
batteries, a converter/controller and a data-logger. The system
operates mostly with the direct action of the renewable sources
while the battery bank participation occurs only in the case of load
demand and electricity produced unbalance. The wind/PV system
operates in a complementary manner, that is, one resource powers
the pumping system when the other is unavailable. Not very com-
mon but possible variations in indeterminacy are alleviated by the
battery bank. Experimental results verify that the wind/PV + bat-
tery bank configuration needs less energy storage compared to
the PV + battery bank one increasing the life cycle of the battery
bank and of the whole renewable source system.
Dursun and Ozden (2012) present an automatic irrigation sys-
tem specifically designed for dwarf cherry trees. A solar PV array,
equipped with a sun tracking system and a battery bank, generates
the desired electricity demand for two brush-less DC motor pumps,
one responsible for elevating the water from the aquifer to a sur-
face pool and the other for transferring the water from the pool
to the drip irrigation system. Solar panels are used for the purpose
of providing the maximum solar energy according to the maximum
daily solar radiation. The water demand is defined automatically
with soil moisture sensors, that regulate the booster surface pump
pressure providing effective management of the irrigation water
requirements. The authors claim that the proposed system could
provide a socioeconomic development in the region of application.
3. System design
All the above presented efforts are to some extent case studies
or in general fragmented studies that do not comprehensively
cover the proper integration of smart grid and smart irrigation.
Many are based on the simple scheme shown in Fig. 1 while very
few consider electrical system stability (power flow 2), dynamic
energy markets and other smart grid issues. In Fig. 1 solar panel is
used for supplying the pump system in order to pump the water
and store it on the reservoir. That is, a simple approach of an irriga-
tion system commonly used in various cases. In this section, a gen-
eric system architecture that extents the conventional irrigation
system towards the power grid in a modern and highly effective
manner is proposed. In that way, efficiency and sustainability is
achieved. The main components of the proposed system (see
Fig. 2) are the following:

Energy Producing Devices.

Energy Consuming Devices.

Energy Markets.

Plant Irrigation System.

Auxillary Modules.

Power Distribution System.
The Information and Communication Bus that integrates the
various components of the proposing system could be realized in
several ways, however these realizations are beyond the scope of
this study.
4. GridLAB-D: a power distribution system simulation and
analysis tool
The need of integrated modeling of power systems, energy mar-
kets, control and building technologies as well as all the resources
that are components of power grid has led on the development of a
freely available simulation platform, the GridLAB-D software
(Chassin et al., 2014). GridLAB-D is an open source simulation plat-
form. It uses agent-based approaches written in C++, in terms of
object and class oriented programming for simulating the distribu-
tion network using in depth distribution models. GridLAB-D per-
forms simulations based on four major components, module
based constructed, that describe the most representative distribu-
tion systems operation, technically as well as financially.
It concerns the power and control system, the buildings and the
market system. Each of those components includes the modules
which are associated with various functions such as distributed
generation and storage, the power demand profile in a home and
the market operation. In the current study, the version of the
GridLAB-D which is utilized is the ‘‘GridLAB-D 3.1.0–4882 (Hatwai)
2
power-flow study, is a numerical analysis of the flow of electric power in an
interconnected system.
 A. Nasiakou et al. / Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 129 (2016) 74–83 77

Fig. 1. A solar based water pumping system already in use (courtesy of http://saururja.com).

Fig. 2. The component view of the overall architecture of the proposed system

32-bit WINDOWS RELEASE”. The id of the source code used by the
authors in order to develop the new components is ‘‘5159”.
Some details regarding the most important modules of
GridLAB-D are given below:

The powerflow module provides the model of the electrical dis-
tribution system for power flow solutions. Power flow is the
most powerful tool for the steady-state operation of power sys-
tems analysis. It aims at calculating the voltage vector in the
entire set of system nodes, that is the basis for further compu-
tation of power vector, currents, power losses, etc. Newton–
Raphson(NR) is the most popular, widely-used, iterative
technique for solving power flow algorithms. GridLAB-D’s
proposed technique is the current mismatch NR, proved to be
quite applicable either for balanced or unbalanced systems,
the latter being the case for 3-phase distribution systems.

The residential module is responsible for implementing home
appliances and providing the characteristics to simulate the
load demand in a house. The house object is the main class of
objects, defined by residential module, which aggregates two
kinds of domestic loads, non-thermostatically controlled appli-
ance loads (lights, cooking, etc.) and thermostatically controlled
loads such as the HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air Condition-
ing) system and the waterheater.

The market module describes the operation of electric energy
market which is organized as a double auction. A double
78 A. Nasiakou et al. / Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 129 (2016) 74–83
auction market is actually a two-way market, where the pro-
ducers and the consumers submit bids (price and quantity).

The generators module provides classes that allow researchers
to implement various electricity generating and storage
resources. Renewable energy resources (solar panels, wind tur-
bines), batteries and other kinds of distributed generation like
diesel engines are the main components of that module. They
are connected to the powerflow solution via meters or triplex
meters.
5. Prototype implementation
The basic concept of this research study is the ability of RES and
batteries to handle both agricultural and residential load; the first,
demanding the load of the irrigation process for a period of four
months (say from June to September) while the second for the rest
eight months demanding both the load associated with evcharger
stations and the residencies’ load.
From GridLAB-D’s generators module, solar panels, wind tur-
bines and batteries are selected for serving the agricultural and
residential load. All the aforementioned sources belong to the class
of the Distributed Energy Sources (DES). RES will always respond
first in case of a demand load, regardless its nature. However, they
will also have the ability of storing excess energy in batteries for
use in case of insufficient operation. EV (Electric Vehicle) charger
stations will additionally demand load in order to cover the vehi-
cle’s needs.
In Thanapalan et al. (2015) the concept of mobile solar panels is
considered. The mobility of the panels, does apply very well to our
approach. In the current study, the mobility issue is not used and
the authors assume that the solar panels, or any other components,
Fig. 3. A model for irrigation loads in the case of humidity sensor data are available.
are placed at appropriate places, no far away from the agricultural
and residential load. A ‘‘good” position could be near the evcharger
stations where batteries are also placed. The batteries placed in the
grid are charged either via the solar panels or via the wind tur-
bines. Obviously, anytime the energy supplied from solar panels
and wind turbines is not enough to serve the required demand,
the load will be directly satisfied from the batteries.
The functionality of the market module has been extended in
order to develop a controller, named irrigation_controller, suit-
able for price responsive control of agricultural load. The agricul-
tural load is designed as ZIPload, object of residential module.
Based on the measurements about the soil humidity and on the
willingness of the customer to pay in order for the device to oper-
ate, the irrigation_controller should adjust the system’s set-points.
The willingness of a customer to pay can be translated into a com-
fort zone where the customer can tolerate a delay of irrigation so as
to achieve a more profitable price. The irrigation_controller’s task
is to take the information about the soil humidity from the sensors
placed on the field.
The comfort zone is described by its limits, namely comfort low
and comfort high, and depicts the acceptable range on soil humid-
ity, analogously dependent on electricity price. The parameter
comfort low indicates how much the user can tolerate a decrease
of humidity. When humidity becomes lower than the
comfort low the system must operate, so the irrigation_controller
must bid for the highest price in order to be included in the market.
On the other hand, comfort high indicates maximum value that the
user prefers for humidity and, due to low prices prevailing in the
market, the user is willing to allow the irrigation system to operate
so as to save money. As observed in Fig. 3 there are two areas on
both sides of the base humidity setpoint. The left area indicates
 A. Nasiakou et al. / Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 129 (2016) 74–83
the willingness of the user to leave the humidity to decrease, while
the right area indicates the willingness of the user to allow the irri-
gation system to operate due to low prices. The other two param-
eters, namely ramp low and ramp high, define the slope of the
piece-wise linear function based on which the bid price is
determined.
1
PðxÞ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi eðxlÞ =2r :
2 2
r 2p
The object house is used to describe, through similarity, new
properties and definitions of terms engaged in agricultural engi-
neering. In that sense, humidity_setpoint acting as a user-
defined command, is added at ZIPload object in order to be avail-
able for the irrigation_controller. Another new agricultural object,
namely soil_sensor for implementing metrics of soil humidity
needed by the irrigation_controller, and a new property, namely
crop_type to define the crop characteristics necessary for imple-
menting the irrigation_controller algorithm, are modeled and
designed via GridLAB-D source code. The soil humidity in fact fol-
lows the normal distribution function defined by Eq. (1). Additional
parameters describing surface geometry like floor_area are also
incorporated.
The calculation of the price for which the irrigation_controller
submits its bids is presented, is based on the following equation:
bid price ¼ av g price
ðHdesired  Hcurrent Þ  ramp high=low  SD
þ ;
jcomfort high=lowj
where SD is the standard deviation, the av g price is the average
price of the market, Hcurrent is the current humidity of the soil as it
is determined in Eq. (1), Hset is the adjusted humidity setpoint of
the irrigation system, which is calculated after the market has
returned the cleared price. Below, the equation for the determina-
tion of Hset and the adjusted humidity setpoint is presented.
If the current soil humidity Hcurrent is lower than this point, then
the irrigation system should start to irrigate.
Hset ¼ Hdesired þ term
where
( water (approximately 100 m high), and a second one for the irriga-
0 if SD ¼ 0
term ¼
ðcleared price  av g priceÞ  jcomfort high=lowj
ðramp high=lowÞ
 SD otherwise
Residential devices are modeled, through the house object and
are controlled by active controllers, having also ZIPload properties
for non thermostatically appliances. As far as the distribution sys-
tem topology concerns, among the feeders supported in GridLAB-D
libraries, the IEEE-13 and the R4 25:00 1 test feeder, are selected.
In fact, the IEEE-13 or the R4 25:00 1 feeder are actually used
for the residential network while the IEEE-4 node test feeder for
supporting the agricultural network. All the feeders are connected
through a meter (object of powerflow module) which gives the
opportunity of controlling simultaneously, both the amount of
energy needed and the amount of energy provided. The distributed
resources are placed in the agricultural network and the energy is
transferred, through the properly equipped, with fuses, capacitors
and regulators, power grid, to serve both residential and agricul-
tural loads.
6. Simulation results
Both the R4 25:00 1 and the IEEE-13 bus test feeders have been
used in this study for supporting the residential network. They are
79
equipped with 68 and 80 houses respectively. Since the standard
version of these feeders do not support connections with solar pan-
els, wind turbines, batteries and evcharger stations, these new fea-
tures have been added in order to design a model that simulates an
area with the following characteristics:
1. The energy requirements of the pumping system are satisfied,
ð1Þ in the most of the cases by RES, and less frequently by energy
stored in the batteries.
2. The evcharger stations are settled at specific points on the grid
close to the fields and/or the villages. Note that, hybrid or full
electric (agricultural or not) vehicles as well as other commer-
cial vehicles are serviced by these stations.
Two scenarios that are as realistic as possible are designed. The
main and most significant difference between them is the type of
the irrigation system. In the former, there is only an irrigation sys-
tem, which uses the water from a surface water reservoir for irri-
gating the fields, while the energy needed is satisfied directly
from the solar panels, the wind turbines and/or the batteries (com-
monly called DES). The power needs of such an irrigation system to
operate under our particular configuration is approximately
20 kW.
The second scenario consists of a grid that has the same, as the
previous scenario, configuration, regarding the load, but this time a
combination of a drilling and an irrigation system with approxi-
mately 60 kW power needs is simulated. The energy requirements
ð2Þ in this scenario are also satisfied directly from the solar panels, the
wind turbines and/or the batteries. The drilling system, which is
responsible for elevating the water on the surface, needs approxi-
mately 40 kW, while the irrigation system connected to a surface
water reservoir (only surface irrigation is of concern) requires
approximately 20 kW. The combination of these two systems could
easily be approximated by only one system, referred in this study
as drilling system, capable of carrying out all of the required power
for both elevating as well as the irrigating process. Therefore, the
drilling system’s task is not restricted exclusively to the water ele-
ð3Þ vation procedure, but it concerns the whole irrigation process. It is
obvious that, quite larger amounts of power are required, since it
concerns two distinct systems; one for lifting up underground
: tion system itself.
In the second scenario, each drilling system is associated with a
ð4Þ virtual battery. The capacity of the virtual battery is analogous to
the stored in the surface reservoir water. This association was con-
sidered since it allows to exploit GridLAB-D’s market framework
based on which the generators submit offers for generated power.
By analogy, this study focuses on the case that the drilling system
submits offers for water to be used for irrigation purposes. Since
there is not implemented a market framework for water
exchanges, the authors sought to convert, or more precisely, to
translate the stored in the reservoir water into power and then
to participate into the power market. This was realized through
the association of the drilling system to a virtual battery which is
responsible to convert the stored in the reservoir cubic meters of
water (m3 ) into power (kW) and then to participate into the power
market.
Obviously when the drilling system operates, the virtual battery
is charging in a slower pace because the pumped underground
water is used for both its storage in the reservoir and its use in
the irrigation process. In particular, when the drilling system oper-
ates, the virtual battery bids high enough to avoid selling energy to
the market thus staying in charging mode. At the same time, the
farmers irrigate using the underground water and any excessive
water left is stored in the reservoir, charging that way the virtual
80 A. Nasiakou et al. / Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 129 (2016) 74–83
battery. In the case where the underground water is not enough to
satisfy the overall water demand, the virtual battery is forced to
participate into the market, by offering water (translated into
power) in lower prices, bridging this gap.
It is also assumed that when the number of fields that require
irrigation at a particular time instance is larger than 7, the under-
ground water is not enough to serve the overall water demand and
thus the virtual battery starts discharging. This means that at the
same time the water demand is satisfied from both the under-
ground water (pumped using a drilling system) and the water
stored in the reservoir.
The implementation of the virtual battery is realized through
the stub_bidder, object of the market module under the following
assumptions:

The water in the reservoir is enough to satisfy the overall water
demand each particular time instance.

Some of the farmers are willing to irrigate during the night.
Based on these assumptions, the virtual battery submits bids to
the market framework during the night (discharging process) and
it charges during the day.
An advanced controller that accommodates the market and
energy logic and the relatively complex functionality of the of vir-
tual battery is needed. In such an implementation, the provided
controller functionality will be based on rules that each user could
set. Such rules will reflect for example the willingness of the farmer
to irrigate based on (a) the market price, (b) the price of the virtual
battery, (c) the availability of the virtual battery, (d) the crop model
itself and often many other. The development of such a smart bid-
der is beyond the scope of this paper. Instead, in this implementa-
tion a simple stub_bidder is utilized.
Both scenarios assume that the water reservoir is full in the
beginning of the simulation and there is enough water in the reser-
voir to cover the total water demand.
In the simulation model, as aforementioned, the load needed by
the irrigation system (first scenario) or the drilling system (second
scenario) is simulated through the ZIPload, object of the residen-
tial module. The evcharger station is simulated through the
evcharger object of the same module. The overall idea of both sce-
narios and the objective of this study is to primarily satisfy the
agricultural load and secondly the residential load (including the
load of the evcharger stations).
Each of the solar panel and the wind turbine, is equipped with a
basic and a reserve battery. The latter is used to store the excessive
energy when the basic battery is full. The batteries discharge when
they participate in the market dispatch, and charge when the RES
have excessive energy that is not consumed. So, the excessive
energy produced by the solar panels and the wind turbines is not
wasted, but stored in the batteries.
For all test cases, each house is equipped with an HVAC system,
a waterheater and a light system. An evcharger station with three
electric vehicle chargers associated with same vehicle travel infor-
mation but with different capacity regarding the evcharger battery
is also simulated. Both agricultural and residential loads submit
bids through their controllers (controller and irrigation_controller
respectively) into the market.
Also in all test cases, when the demand is not fully satisfied
from the RES (solar panels, wind turbines) and the batteries, the
agricultural load has priority over the residential load. In these
cases, the residential load is excluded from being satisfied by the
DES (RES and batteries) and it is satisfied from the main grid.
The first test case, in which the R4 25:00 1 feeder is utilized for
the residential network, is associated with the configuration of the
first scenario and described by the following parameters:
Fig. 4. Market Clearing: The demand, supply and clearing quantity in kW
correspond to y axis while the x axis represents the simulation time which is
24 h for the first scenario with one field.

One wheat type field.

The residential network accommodates 68 houses.

The humidity setpoint for the wheat used by the irrigation_con-
troller is 35.

A solar panel with area of 250 m2 .

A wind turbine of 15 kW max power output.

Two batteries with maximum capacity of 20 kW h and initial
available energy equal to 10 kW h.
The results of this test case, shown in Fig. 4, indicate the capa-
bility of the DES to satisfy both the agricultural and residential
load, with the exception of a few time periods where part of the
demand is satisfied from the main grid.
In the first test case, important parameters have not been taken
into account. For instance, crop type is a major parameter affecting
the overall irrigation scheduling of a field; different crop types
require different amounts of water. Therefore, they affect the soil
humidity in different way; cotton needs more water than wheat.
Soil humidity is reduced faster during the day, than during the
night, obviously affected by solar radiation. A more realistic test
case based on the first scenario, which uses the R4 25:00 1 feeder
for the residential network and includes in the calculation of soil
humidity the crop type and the solar radiation, is specified by
the parameters below:

One cotton type field.

The residential network accommodates 68 houses.

The humidity setpoint used by the irrigation_controller is 45 for
the cotton type.

A solar panel area of 450 m2 .

A wind turbine of 15 kW max power output.

Two batteries with maximum capacity of 20 kW h and initial
available energy equal to 10 kW h are simulated.
The results of the second test case are depicted in Fig. 5, where
at a first sight, it is obvious that a cotton type is quite more
demanding field compared to wheat since it requires a solar panel
area of 450 m2 ; much greater than the 250 m2 required in the
wheat case. The energy demand for irrigating a field with cotton
is smoother with less disturbances, because the irrigation system
operates continuously for approximately four and a half hours
instead of the seven 15 min discrete periods of time compared to
wheat field (see Fig. 4).
A more complex but again more realistic than the above two
test cases, is the case where the second scenario is used and more
than one fields needs irrigation. In such test cases, both economical
as well as technical issues have to be considered, since the bid price
of electricity plays a decisive role in the procedure. The following
are the basic parameter characteristics of this case:
 A. Nasiakou et al. / Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 129 (2016) 74–83 81

Table 2
Energy resources price configuration.

Solar Wind Battery Virtual

panel turbine battery
Price ($/kW h) (day/night) 0.25/0.30 0.25/0.25 0.30/0.25 0.30/0.25

Fig. 5. Market Clearing: The demand, supply and clearing quantity in kW

correspond to y axis while the x axis represents to the simulation time which is
24 h for the first scenario when the soil humidity calculation is based on the crop
type and solar radiation.

Fig. 7. The residential and agricultural load for the cases with the one and the three
fields.

offer it at a price higher than the lowest price of the last consumer
(sorting the consumers in a descending hierarchy, the last con-
sumer is the last in the hierarchy), these producers will not be
included in the market dispatch. In this case, the demand of the
consumers may not be fully satisfied. To that end, one more test
case by changing the price of wind turbine during the night from
Fig. 6. Market Clearing: The demand, supply and clearing quantity in kW 0.25 $/kW h to 0.30 $/kW h is conducted. In that test case, it is
correspond to y axis while the x axis represents the simulation time which is
24 h for the second scenario with three fields.
observed that despite the fact that the supply is greater than the
demand, the demand is not fully satisfied. This is due to the fact
that the price has a significant role on the operation of the market
Table 1 as mentioned previously.
Energy resources configuration. It is worth mentioning here that, for experimental purposes, the
Solar panel Wind turbine Battery
soil humidity of each field is different in the beginning of the sim-
ulation. Actually, by setting different values to the soil humidity,
Scenario 1 2 1 2 1 2
the irrigation system for each field does not operate at the same
Max capacity 51 kW 85 kW 15 kW 30 kW 20 kW h 70 kW h
Type Single Crystal Small Medium Li-ion (Li) or Lead- time. Time shifting processes in water demand also play a signifi-
Silicon (SCS) acid (LA) cant role in an attempt to waste the least possible energy. Fig. 7
shows that the operation of the irrigation system at different time
intervals leads potentially to lesser amounts of wasted energy.
The more extended test cases for both scenarios, using the IEEE-

Three fields are simulated. Two of them are wheat fields and the 13 test feeder instead of the R4 25:00 1 prototypical feeder, are
third one is a cotton field. these with a number of ten fields and the following characteristics:

The humidity setpoint used by the irrigation_controller is set to
35 for the wheat field and to 45 for the cotton field.
Ten fields with different crop types and humidity setpoints in

The residential network accommodates 68 houses. the range of 25–45 in order to operate in different time intervals

A solar panel area of 750 m2 . are simulated.

A wind turbine generator of 30 kW max power output.
The residential network accommodates 80 houses.

Two batteries with maximum capacity of 70 kW h are utilized
Two areas of solar panels of 1500 m2 for the first scenario and
for storage purposes. 3000 m2 for the second one.

A wind turbine of 150 kW max power output.
The results illustrated in Fig. 6, show that the major part of the
Five battery sets of two batteries (basic and reserve) with max-
overall demand (agricultural and residential) is satisfied almost imum capacity of 300 kW h for the first scenario and 400 kW h
exclusively by the DES. Also, compared to Fig. 4, it is clear that, for the second.
the most the fields that are simulated, the least the wasted energy.
In Table 1, the configuration of the DES for the last two aforemen- Figs. 8 and 9 illustrate the results, concerning the first and the
tioned test cases is depicted. The economical characteristics in second scenario respectively, where the 70% of overall demand is
terms of bid price are depicted in Table 2 as follows: associated with the agricultural load and the remaining 30% with
A bid price that is negotiated by the consumers plays a domi- the residential load. In the residential load, the load associated
nant role, since customers are the price makers, not the price tak- with the evcharger stations is also included.
ers as it used to be. This simply means that customers participate Focusing on the configuration of the test case of the second sce-
in a type of a pool market playing the role of a decision maker. For nario, three drilling systems associated with three virtual batteries
instance, if there is excessive produced energy and the producers with max capacity 300 kW h each of them are simulated. In Fig. 10,
82 A. Nasiakou et al. / Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 129 (2016) 74–83
Fig. 8. Market Clearing: Information about producing and consuming units (kW)
corresponds to y axis while the x axis represents the simulation time which is two
days for the test case associated with the first scenario and the IEEE-13 test feeder.
Fig. 9. Market Clearing: Information about producing and consuming units (kW)
corresponds to y axis while the x axis represents the simulation time which is two
days for the test case associated with the second scenario and the IEEE-13 test
feeder.
Fig. 10. Number of drilling systems in operation for the whole simulation time.
the number of drilling systems regarding the last test case, that
operate each particular time instance, is depicted. The two drilling
systems out of three are responsible to serve 6 fields, while the last
drilling system the remaining 4. If the farmers prefer to irrigate
during the day, the pumped underground water is used from the
irrigation system. On the other hand, when the farmers irrigate
during the night and due to the fact that the drilling system does
not operate during the night, the virtual battery discharges by
offering water in terms of power through its participation in the
market framework as described earlier.
The solar panels, the wind turbines and the batteries participat-
ing in the market for the whole simulation time are illustrated in
Fig. 11. This figure also depicts the price of each of the DES. In this
Fig. 11. Energy source that offers energy in the market each particular time for the
second scenario.
Fig. 12. Demand for the residential and agricultural load for both first and second
scenario with the 10 fields for two days simulation
Fig. 13. Demand for the residential and agricultural load with 10 fields for the two
seasons. The first day (first half of the figure) corresponds to the agricultural season
and the second one (second half of the figure) to the residential.
figure, the x-axis represents the simulation time and the y-axis to
each type of DES. When the value of a source is zero then the
energy source does not participate in the market dispatch and its
bid price is 0.30 $/kW h. On the contrary, the bid price is 0.25 $/
kW h. It is has to be noted that, when a producer prefers not to
be included in the market dispatch, its bid price is high enough.
Through the simulations conducted in this study, the bid price in
order the producer not to be included in the market dispatch is
0.30 $/kW h.
So far, the test cases dealt with both the agricultural and resi-
dential load in a yearly basis as depicted in Fig. 12. However, a con-
sideration must also be made for discrete time operation of both
loads. The agricultural network asks for energy for about a four
months period, called agricultural season, while the residential
for the rest eight months, called residential season.
For this case, in the agricultural season, the energy from the DES
satisfies both the agricultural load and the evcharger station load,
 A. Nasiakou et al. / Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 129 (2016) 74–83
while in the residential season the load of the residential network
and the load demanded by the evcharger stations. The agricultural,
the evcharger station and the residential load submit bids through
their controllers and stub_bidders in different seasons into the
market. Agricultural loads submit bids in the agricultural season
while the residential loads in the residential season. The stub_bid-
der of evcharger station submits bids in both periods. The results of
that case are illustrated in Fig. 13.
As a consequence of the above, the test cases showed that the
load required for both the irrigation system and the drilling system
as a whole and the residential load could be satisfied mainly from
the DES. There are few cases where there is need for energy from
the main grid. In that sense, such a grid with these capabilities
can be referred as an isolated microgrid where the demand is fully
satisfied from RES and batteries. By including larger batteries, there
is less wasted energy because the unconsumed energy can be
stored in the batteries for future use.
7. Summary and recommendations
Smart energy focuses largely on residential and industrial issues
and less on transportation and commercial, for several and diverse
reasons. The agricultural aspect of the smart energy has been rela-
tively untouched. Regardless the reasons for it, it is our belief, that
the agricultural sector is very crucial for many countries, in order
to succeed further growth and development. In that sense, and
due to the drawback of relatively high electric costs, it is a rather
promising field for research and development of microgrid struc-
tures and smart grid applications. A reduction of grid-connected
costs, by utilization of alternative physical resources operating
off-grid, can potentially be a strong motivation for the participants
(professional agriculturists that live in rural villages).
In a final prototype implementation of the combined agricul-
tural and residential design and simulation, the authors assume
that the following steps are necessary for an application develop-
ment able to become an industrial/commercial software tool:
Step 1 Existing Conditions.
Step 2 Requirements.
Step 3 Power Generation Specification.
Step 4 Market Modeling.
Step 5 Simulations.
Step 6 Analysis If not satisfied go to Step 2.
Step 7 Final system design.
Step 8 Exploitation - Bank-ability.
Based on the aforementioned implementation guide some
remarkable issues concerning the design are the following: A
design approach is needed for the calculation of the required solar
panel items and the equivalent area surface for their installation.
The weather and soil conditions as well as, the surface to be irri-
gated are necessary to be known either by empirical knowledge
or by appropriate physical models. The solar installation is crucial
since, there is a strong feeling that the relatively high power
requirement of drilling systems would probably result in a large
number of required solar panels. It is evident that the greater the
number of agriculturists they wish to participate, the greater the
number of solar panels needed for serving the demanded pumping
load. In that sense, a design approach according which, the panels
83
are not operating concurrently but in a time shift process based on
an appropriate market model, creating incentives, for example, for
a night operation of the irrigation process, would probably lead to a
smaller number of required solar panels. In general, an energy and
irrigation management system would potentially improve the total
performance of the entire market-based off-grid distribution
system.
The viability of such an effort could be gained, if several physi-
cal as well as, policy parameters are considered. Seeing it, by an
investment viewpoint, the feasibility depends on the number of
agriculturists they wish to participate. It is our belief, that the
greater the number of end-users, the greater the investments pro-
spects, and the equivalent cost savings for both the investor and
the user. Based on that fact, a possible deal of a future investor with
agricultural cooperative associations is a first step towards a med-
ium to a large scale implementation. An alternative, even more
profitable, for the agriculturists themselves, could be the invest-
ment prospect by their own, that is, a number of them agree to
such an investment and they become generators and consumers
at the same time.
Appendix A. Supplementary material
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in
the online version, at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2016.09.
008.
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