Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rser Optimal management of energy hubs and smart energy hubs – A review Mohammad Mohammadi a , Younes Noorollahi a, ⁎ , Behnam Mohammadi-ivatloo b , Mehdi Hosseinzadeh c , Hossein Yousefi a , Sasan Torabzadeh Khorasani d a Department of Renewable Energy and Environment, Faculty of New Sciences and Technologies, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran b Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran c Computer Science, University of Human Development, Sulaimaniyah, Iraq d Industrial Engineering Department, Texas Tech University, United States ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Energy hub Multi-energy systems Distributed energy resources Demand side management Smart energy hubs Social network Sustainable energy systems ABSTRACT The increase of environmental concerns, scarcity of fossil fuel resources, uncontrolled growth of demand, along with the development of efficient multi-generation systems have made the restructuring of current energy systems inevitable. Future energy systems will be in the form of sustainable multi-energy systems. The optimal operation of such systems requires an integrated energy management system for optimal planning, control and management. Energy hub is a new and promising concept for optimal management of systems with multiple energy carriers. Energy hub has a large potential for realization of energy system models and moving towards sustainable multi-energy systems. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the concepts and different applications of energy hubs in various energy consumption sectors including residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural, and the integration of these systems. The potential role of energy hub as an integrated energy management system to solve the main challenges in these consumption sectors is evaluated. This study focuses on the benefits earned by integration of the options such as demand side management, distributed energy re- sources, renewable energy resources, multi-generation systems, storage systems as well as using the smart technologies by introducing the concept of smart energy hubs. 1. Introduction Energy has always been one of the basic human needs and now with the advent of various energy consumer technologies and increasing the dependence of human life style on energy, this need becomes more apparent. Therefore, supplying a sustainable, clean, secure and af- fordable energy is one of the main challenges of the present century [1]. In the past century, fossil fuels were the main source of energy in dif- ferent parts of the world. The dominant form of this energy supply was in the form of electricity production through centralized power plants. However, the scarcity and environmental effects of fossil fuel resources are among the challenges leads to thinking about the alternative solu- tions and more efficient energy resources [2]. The traditional power systems have a hierarchical structure and the energy generated in central power plants is transported long distances to the place of consumption. However, the low efficiency of primary energy consumption, huge investment costs, high losses, control and protection problems, have led to serious problems in the performance of such systems. In these systems, intelligent equipment can only be used locally by protection, control and data collection systems. But now, power systems are getting smarter and automated which called smart grid [3]. Smart grid in addition to traditional network's tasks such as generation, transmission, and distribution of power has the ability to store, interact and make decisions. Smart grids try to use advanced applications and the use of communications, information management and automated monitoring technologies to develop, optimize and im- prove the performance of the electricity network infrastructures. Smart grid leads to increase efficiency in demand supply and optimal using of existing infrastructure that minimizes the need to system development. On the other hand, smart grid facilitates the integration of renewable energy sources (RES) especially in the form of distributed generation (DG) on the demand side [4]. The development of distributed energy resources (DER), in parti- cular, RES and multi-generation systems, are promising options that can change the energy production concept from large centralized power plants to the local and distributed generation in the future. In the past five years, new renewable energy investments in each year have been at least $ 200 billion and this amount was $ 265 billion in 2016. In this context, the share of renewable energy from total global energy con- sumption was 19.3% in 2015 and 24.5% of the global electricity was https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2018.02.035 Received 30 December 2016; Received in revised form 11 September 2017; Accepted 27 February 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: Noorollahi@ut.ac.ir (Y. Noorollahi). Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 89 (2018) 33–50 1364-0321/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T