Evolution of Communication Technologies for Smart Grid applications

The inclusion of renewable energy in the conventional grid system and the digitalization of the various aspects of the power system have precipitated the transformation of the traditional grid system to a smart grid. Key to the implementation of the smart grid is various communication technologies. The emerging dominance of communication technologies in power systems applications is pivotal to modernizing the conventional grid system. This research presented an overview of the application of communication technologies in the digitalization of the power systems network. It reviews smart grid communication technologies, their features, relevance, and various roles being played toward delivering an effective electrical service to stakeholders. Hence, this study focused on wireless and wired communication technologies applicable to smart grid applications. Based on the review, each communication technology has its strengths and weaknesses; hence in selecting the most appropriate technology for application in a smart grid, a compromise must be made. Therefore, for choosing the most preferred communication technology in any smart grid application, it is important to deploy the efficacy of multi-criteria methods. To serve as a case study, a framework for selecting a communication technology for advanced metering infrastructure is proposed and applied. Based on the spectrum, data rate, and coverage range, the study revealed that WiMAX communication technology is the most preferred, followed by Zigbee; the least preferred communication technology for smart grid communication is Power Line Communication (PLC).

Communication network requirements for major smart grid applications in HAN, NAN and WAN

This paper introduces Smart Grid and associated technical, environmental and socio-economic, and other non-tangible benefits to society, and articulates the need for the concept and the fact that it is a dynamic interactive, real-time infrastructure that responds to the challenges of designing and building the power system of the future, rather than being simply a marketing term. To illustrate the diversity of terminology, the paper compares an Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) definition with that suggested by a study group of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Next, a paper sponsored by the Canadian Electricity Association (CEA) that cites three example definitions to highlight the diversity of views of Smart Grid is briefly reviewed. Early misconceptions and characterizations of Smart Grid are discussed as a prelude to addressing challenging issues that motivate developing and implementing related innovative technologies, products and services. The paper then discusses the potential promise of the Smart Grid, which is embedded in its often-cited attributes of efficiency, accommodating, quality focus, enabling and self-healing to name some. The paper then addresses some of the often-cited impediments to accepting Smart Grid which are based on concerns and issues confronting its forward progress, adoption and acceptance. Distribution Automation (DA) and embedded intelligence are discussed emphasising self-healing, optimizing operation and facilitating recreation and recovery from abnormal events. Functional and integration requirements of Distributed Energy Resources (DER,) are detailed. Smart Consumption Infrastructure elements of Distribution Management Systems (DMS,) Automated Metering Infrastructure (AMI,) Smart Homes (SH), and Smart Appliances (SA,) are discussed. Following the introductory section, this paper summarizes contributions included in the double issue 42(3–4) of the Electric Power Components and Systems Journal. To begin, papers are offered discussing smart grid activities in China, India, and the development of a Smart Grid roadmap for the US State of Kentucky. The approaches of each of these cases reflect the diversity of policy initiatives in these jurisdictions. Two state of the art reviews are given next. The first considers distribution network active management and future development trends in technologies and methods, where centralized and decentralized management frameworks and applying agent-based coordination are discussed. The second offers a review of smart home technologies and the goals of an energy management system (SHEMS). This section is concluded by a letter providing an overview of recent and expected advances nanotechnology applications in Smart Grid. Following the state of the art review section, ten papers offering new and innovative research approaches and results are included. These papers cover Smart Grid topics such as real-time energy control approach for smart home energy management systems, optimal operation of energy- efficient buildings with Combined Heat and Power (CHP) systems, energy management and control of Electric Vehicle (EV) charging stations, voltage-frequency control of a voltage source inverter (VSI) in a smart islanded microgrid, smart generation scheduling for wind-thermal-pumped storage systems, optimized power system restoration, robust data transmission upon compressive sensing, data fusion for wide-area oscillation monitoring, satellite based GPS synchronized monitoring systems, stability in Smart Grid with emerging renewable energy techno- logies.

Today, continuous technical and emerging advances between power communication systems and smart grids and applying swarm intelligence have increased for data sharing and analytics in our life. On the other side, Internet of things (IoT) has important key role to establish constructive interactions between smart devices and smart grid and power communication applications. For enhancing data transformation and improvements of multi-objective Quality of Service (QoS) factors, Swarm Optimization Techniques (SOT) are applied simultaneously in a cooperative smart environment to solve NP-hard problems. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis to address a new technical taxonomy and categorization of existing SOT-based smart grid applications in power communication systems in the IoT. Also, existing service and resource management case studies on smart grids and power communication systems are briefly analyzed and discussed. Existing evaluation factors on smart grid applications using SOT are represented. Possible advantages and weaknesses of each category are discussed with respect to new challenges and open research directions.

Power Line Communications (PLC) is regarded as the promising home networking technology for smart grid application since the PLC technology enables data transmission via the existing power line. The cooperation between PLC and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) will be an effective hybrid solution for Home Area Networks (HANs). In this paper, we consider that Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) packets are transmitting in heterogenous communications network based on PLC and WLAN. The existing TCP congestion control has low effectiveness due to the error-prone power line channel. Therefore, we propose an adaptive rate control to improve TCP performance in the hybrid PLC/WLAN HANs. We exploit the communications mechanism of WLAN to improve the PLC link utilization. The methodology of Heuristic Dynamic Programming (HDP) is employed to obtain the optimal rate policy. The bottleneck link capacity is estimated by neural network training. The sending rate is adapted according to the long-term quality of service (QoS) of applications. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed rate control effectively filters out the negative impact from the instantaneous impulse noise in PLC channel and outperforms the existing TCP.

An instrumentation engineer’s review on smart grid: Critical applications and parameters

Nowadays, a hybrid of communication technologies including a variety of wired and wireless technologies have been used in smart grid. Each wireless communication technology has its advantages and disadvantages. Short-range links, high power consumption, high cost, or a mesh topology are the main characters for wireless technologies. Due to wireless connection problems in mesh topology and a large amount of infrastructure required to build a reliable network, the costs of deployment for smart grid are still amazing. Recently, a new wireless technology Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) has challenged typical wireless connection. It is characterized by low-cost and long-range transmission technologies, and enables power efficient communication over very long distances using a simple topology. In this paper, we introduce the new wireless technology to implement the applications in smart grid, and discuss its advantages and the potential opportunities and challenges that can bring to smart grid.

Smart grid technologies and applications

MQRP: Mobile sinks-based QoS-aware data gathering protocol for wireless sensor networks-based smart grid applications in the context of industry 4.0-based on internet of things

This review paper reveals the broadband potential of overhead and underground low-voltage (LV) and medium-voltage (MV) broadband over power lines (BPL) networks associated with multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology. The contribution of this review paper is fourfold. First, the unified value decomposition (UVD) modal analysis is introduced. UVD modal analysis is a new technique that unifies eigenvalue decomposition (EVD) and singular value decomposition (SVD) modal analyses achieving the common handling of traditional SISO/BPL and upcoming MIMO/BPL systems. The validity of UVD modal analysis is examined by comparing its simulation results with those of other exact analytical models. Second, based on the proposed UVD modal analysis, the MIMO channels of overhead and underground LV and MV BPL networks (distribution BPL networks) are investigated with regard to their inherent characteristics. Towards that direction, an extended collection of well-validated metrics from the communications literature, such as channel attenuation, average channel gain (ACG), root-mean-square delay spread (RMS-DS), coherence bandwidth (CB), cumulative capacity, capacity complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF), and capacity gain (GC), is first applied in overhead and underground MIMO/LV and MIMO/MV BPL channels and systems. It is found that the results of the aforementioned metrics portfolio depend drastically on the frequency, the power grid type (either overhead or underground, either LV or MV), the MIMO scheme configuration properties, the MTL configuration, the physical properties of the cables used, the end-to-end distance, and the number, the electrical length, and the terminations of the branches encountered along the end-to-end BPL signal propagation. Third, three interesting findings concerning the statistical properties of MIMO channels of distribution BPL networks are demonstrated, namely, (i) the ACG, RMS-DS, and cumulative capacity lognormal distributions; (ii) the correlation between RMS-DS and ACG; and (iii) the correlation between RMS-DS and CB. By fitting the numerical results, unified regression distributions appropriate for MIMO/BPL channels and systems are proposed. These three fundamental properties can play significant role in the evaluation of recently proposed statistical channel models for various BPL systems. Fourth, the potential of transformation of overhead and underground LV/BPL and MV/BPL distribution grids to an alternative solution to fiber-to-the-building (FTTB) technology is first revealed. By examining the capacity characteristics of various MIMO scheme configurations and by comparing these capacity results against SISO ones, a new promising urban backbone network seems to be born in a smart grid (SG) environment.

The evolution from conventional to smart grids over the last decades has obliged the grid to be prone to challenges by means of secure and reliable operation. One of the most important facts about smart grids is the communication infrastructure, which is a key factor while maintaining the secure operation of smart grid systems. This paper will focus on the communication techniques used in smart grids and their applications. Communication techniques have a crucial importance to ensure the efficient, flexible, reliable, sustainable, secure and robust features of the smart grids. Long term benefits and challenges of the smart grid communication techniques are elaborated thoroughly. Quantitative and qualitative features of the communication techniques are classified. Existing communication techniques such as ZigBee, WLAN, cellular communication, Power Line Communication (PLC) are compared within the standards and protocols. With the extensive integration of distributed energy resource (DER)s to the smart grid, the communication network infrastructure used in these resources are investigated. Moreover, the future oriented techniques (FoT) are presented for consideration in smart grid applications.

Machine learning (ML)-based intrusion detection system (IDS) approaches have been significantly applied and advanced the state-of-the-art system security and defense mechanisms. In smart grid computing environments, security threats have been significantly increased as shared networks are commonly used, along with the associated vulnerabilities. However, compared to other network environments, ML-based IDS research in a smart grid is relatively unexplored, although the smart grid environment is facing serious security threats due to its unique environmental vulnerabilities. In this article, we conducted an extensive survey on ML-based IDS in smart grids based on the following key aspects: (1) The applications of the ML-based IDS in transmission and distribution side power components of a smart power grid by addressing its security vulnerabilities; (2) dataset generation process and its usage in applying ML-based IDSs in the smart grid; (3) a wide range of ML-based IDSs used by the surveyed papers in the smart grid environment; (4) metrics, complexity analysis, and evaluation testbeds of the IDSs applied in the smart grid; and (5) lessons learned, insights, and future research directions.

The Smart Grid (SG) is one of the most ultimate topics within the energy communities. It refers to the modernized electric grid, including innovative Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to support enhanced power management, protection, security, reliability, and improved costumer choice. To that, SG systems depends on reliable and scalable networking solution to allow efficient communications amongst applications, as power monitoring, protection, demand response and advanced metering, and Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) that provide SG system measurements. However, the deployment of SG applications is complex and very challenging, given the missing of standards and convergent technologies to enable the jointly operation of the underlying heterogeneous systems. SG applications must implement different interfaces to intercommunicate with IEDs in their platforms, process-bus communication protocol, network technologies, and other, limiting the system scalability and time response. We propose the Session Aware Multicast based Architecture (SAMbA) to decouple the intercommunication amongst SG applications and multiple heterogeneous IEDs. SAMbA also leverages multihoming control to keep best connected sessions, and adopts multicast-based channels to achieve optimized communications, while hiding network aspects, as naming and addressing, of IEDs. Simulation results from scenarios under Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) application traffic show that the SAMbA architecture outperforms the typical communication scheme in terms of network performance aspects.

Optimized Bi-LSTM model with attention mechanism for power line communication signal recognition in the distribution network

A ZigBee communication technology is established recently for several smart electric grid applications like Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS), Electric Vehicles (EVs), wireless automatic Metering, load control, fault detection and power outages. Analysis is done to investigate the performance of ZigBee in terms of throughput, packet delivery ratio, average delay and energy consumed in various three dimensional smart electric grid environments which includes an outdoor 500KV substation, an underground network transformer vaults and an indoor power control room. We are considering three dimensional sensor node deployments as more practical in the real world. From our simulation results it is seen that IEEE 802.15.4 based ZigBee is best suited for smart electric grid applications which are having less reliability requirements.