Synthetic fuel and renewable energy: Integration of distributed renewable energy generation with customer-end energy management system for effective smart distribution grid operation

The global fossil oil reserve, which is depleting rapidly due to its extensive use, has been estimated at approximately 1.47 trillion barrels. Today, the transportation industry is considered the major consumer of fossil fuel, the current consumption rate of fossil fuel has been estimated at approximately 84 million barrels per day. Overall, the global energy consumption rate is increasing at approximately 1.4% every year [1]. This rate is due to the rapid expansion of the economy of BRIC nations like Brazil, India, China, and Russia along with other developed nations like Japan, Germany, and the United States. The global natural gas reserve on the other hand has been estimated at approximately 6.6 quadrillion cubic feet and has not been utilized extensively as compared to fossil oil. The natural gas reserves mainly comprise methane that needs further processing in order to be utilized as a commercial fuel for the transportation industry. Natural gas can be processed to liquid fuel either by physical transformation route, like liquefaction of natural gas, or chemical transformation to liquid hydrocarbons, using gas-to-liquid (GTL) technology.