Toward Interoperability of Smart Grids

Smart grid has emerged as the next generation of power grids for improved control and efficiency of power production, delivery, and consumption. Unlike the traditional power grid, a smart grid involves significant data communication across the grid. However, in the current practice, different areas of the power domain use different data semantic models, which has caused significant interoperability issues among systems and become a major barrier toward smart grids. Interoperability issues can also arise in communication. There has been growing interest in adopting publish-subscribe communication for improved quality of communication in smart grids. However, adopting publish-subscribe communication requires resolving potential interoperability issues with the client-server communication in the traditional power grid. In this article, we explore interoperability issues in smart grids and discuss how they can be addressed from the data and communication perspectives.