An Empirical Study of Communication Infrastructures Towards the Smart Grid: Design, Implementation, and Evaluation

The smart grid features ubiquitous interconnections of power equipments to enable two-way flows of electricity and information for various intelligent power management applications, such as accurate relay protection and timely demand response. To fulfill such pervasive equipment interconnects, a full-fledged communication infrastructure is of great importance in the smart grid. There have been extensive works on disparate layouts of communication infrastructures in the smart grid by surveying feasible wired or wireless communication technologies, such as power line communications and cellular networks. Nevertheless, towards an operable, cost-efficient and backward-compatible communication solution, more comprehensive and practical understandings are still urgently needed regarding communication requirements, applicable protocols, and system performance. Through such comprehensive understandings, we are prone to answer a fundamental question, how to design, implement and integrate communication infrastructures with power systems. In this paper, we address this issue in a case study of a smart grid demonstration project, the Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management (FREEDM) systems. By investigating communication scenarios, we first clarify communication requirements implied in FREEDM use cases. Then, we adopt a predominant protocol framework, Distributed Network Protocol 3.0 over TCP/IP (DNP3 over TCP/IP), to practically establish connections between electric devices for data exchanges in a small-scale FREEDM system setting, Green Hub. Within the real-setting testbed, we measure the message delivery performance of the DNP3-based communication infrastructure. Our results reveal that diverse timing requirements of message deliveries are arguably primary concerns in a way that dominates viabilities of protocols or schemes in the communication infrastructure of the smart grid. Accordingly, although DNP3 over TCP/IP is widely considered as a smart grid communication solution, it cannot satisfy communication requirements in some time-critical scenarios, such as relay protections, which claim a further optimization on the protocol efficiency of DNP3.

[1]  Victor H. Todd.  Protective Relays: Their Theory, Design, and Practical Operation , 2008 .

[2]  Peter Palensky,et al.  Demand Side Management: Demand Response, Intelligent Energy Systems, and Smart Loads , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics.

[3]  Frank Fuller Fowle,et al.  Standard handbook for electrical engineers , 2012 .

[4]  S. Mohagheghi,et al.  Communication protocols and networks for power systems-current status and future trends , 2009, 2009 IEEE/PES Power Systems Conference and Exposition.

[5]  Jianfeng Ma,et al.  Authentication and Integrity in the Smart Grid: An Empirical Study in Substation Automation Systems , 2012, Int. J. Distributed Sens. Networks.

[6]  Mark D. Hadley,et al.  A Survey of Wireless Communications for the Electric Power System , 2010 .

[7]  Alexander Apostolov.  Testing of complex IEC 61850 based substation automation systems , 2008 .

[8]  Wenye Wang,et al.  Talk to transformers: An empirical study of device communications for the FREEDM system , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Communications (SmartGridComm).

[9]  Yi Xu,et al.  A survey on the communication architectures in smart grid , 2011, Comput. Networks.

[10]  A Q Huang,et al.  The Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management (FREEDM) System: The Energy Internet , 2011, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[11]  D. Fischer,et al.  Developing a communication infrastructure for the Smart Grid , 2009, 2009 IEEE Electrical Power & Energy Conference (EPEC).

[12]  Srdjan Lukic,et al.  Performance evaluation of solid state transformer based microgrid in FREEDM systems , 2011, 2011 Twenty-Sixth Annual IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC).

[13]  Jianfeng Ma,et al.  On Network Performance Evaluation toward the Smart Grid: A Case Study of DNP3 over TCP/IP , 2011, 2011 IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference - GLOBECOM 2011.

[14]  Hugh Outhred.  Meeting the Challenges of Integrating Renewable Energy into Competitive Electricity Industries , 2007 .

[15]  Kenneth C. Budka,et al.  Communication network architecture and design principles for smart grids , 2010, Bell Labs Technical Journal.

[16]  Mischa Steurer,et al.  A digital testbed for FREEDM system development , 2010, IEEE PES General Meeting.

[17]  A. R..  Standard Handbook for Electrical Engineers , 1923, Nature.

[18]  Xing Liu,et al.  Fault management and protection of FREEDM systems , 2010, IEEE PES General Meeting.

[19]  Azah Mohamed,et al.  TECHNICAL CHALLENGES ON MICROGRIDS , 2008 .

[20]  E. Ortjohann,et al.  Challenges in integrating distributed Energy storage systems into future smart grid , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics.

[21]  Alex Huang,et al.  FREEDM system - a vision for the future grid , 2010, IEEE PES General Meeting.

[22]  Joan M. Ogden,et al.  Integration of Renewable Energy into Present and Future Energy Systems , 2011 .

[23]  M. Baran,et al.  Power management strategies for The Green Hub , 2012, 2012 IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting.

[24]  Xi Fang,et al.  3. Full Four-channel 6.3-gb/s 60-ghz Cmos Transceiver with Low-power Analog and Digital Baseband Circuitry 7. Smart Grid — the New and Improved Power Grid: a Survey , 2022 .

[25]  T. C. Shuter,et al.  Survey of Harmonic Levels on the American Electric Power Distribution System , 1989, IEEE Power Engineering Review.

[26]  Frank C. Lambert,et al.  A survey on communication networks for electric system automation , 2006, Comput. Networks.

[27]  Wenye Wang,et al.  Review and evaluation of security threats on the communication networks in the smart grid , 2010, 2010 - MILCOM 2010 MILITARY COMMUNICATIONS CONFERENCE.