Technical and practical application of integrated energy technology in smart community

Smart community (SC) serves as a vital hub for diverse human activities, and the integrated energy technology plays an important role in maintaining its normal operation and realizing advanced functions. Integrated energy technology consists of multiple energy technologies throughout the whole life cycle and the complete energy transformation process. Although there are some literature reviews on energy technologies and SC, in most of the existing works, these two fields are studied separately, let alone works on the technical and practical application of integrated energy technology in SC. To fill the gap, a compact survey on the integrated energy technology in SC is given in this paper. The main energy issues and corresponding solutions in SC are introduced, including addressing uncertainties, reducing energy loss, taking advantages of interactions among multiple energy entities, dealing with various faults, and evaluating the operating performance of SC. Then, a number of worldwide SC projects are compared regarding energy technology, with a typical demonstration project in China elaborated in detail. Finally, the future research directions of integrated energy technology in SC are discussed. This survey aims at giving reference for future investigation of integrated energy technology in SC to promote smart human livelihood and reduce carbon emissions.