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We have experimentally demonstrated a new smart grid model which can control DC electric power flow autonomously among individual homes, by using an optical self-organized node with optical non-linear characteristics, and these homes are assumed to be installed by distributed power supplies, and electric power storage devices, and also supposed to be supplied partly by the commercial electric power grid utilities. An electric power network is composed of nodes and devises called Power Gate Unit (PGU). The nodes have optical nonlinearity for self-organizing informations about surplus or shortage of electric power as to individual homes. The PGU is a distributing unit of actual electric power based on above informations of power surplus or shortage at each home. The PGU at each home is electrically connected to both the onsite power supplies and household load such as a solar panel, a DC motor, and a storage battery as well as the commercial electric power grid utilities. In this work, we composed our experimental self-organized DC power grid with above components and supposed the supplied maximum power from the commercial electric power grid utilities to be limited to 5V-0.5A. In this network, information about surplus or shortage of electric power will propagate through the nodes. In the experiments, surplus electric current 0.4A at a particular node was distributed toward a PGU of another node suffering from shortage of electric current. We also confirmed in the experiments and simulations that even when signal propagation path was disconnected accidentally the network could recover an optimized path. The present smart grid system we have attained may be applied by optical fiber link in the near future because our essential components controlling PGU, i.e. the nodes are electro-optical hybrid which are easily applicable to fiber optical link so as to control electric power transmission line.
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