Performance Analysis of Mobile Radio for Automatic Control in Smart Grids

In the context of a ―Smart Grid‖ research project, together with industrial partners, the OTH-Regensburg realized an intelligent medium-voltage grid in the local area. Goal was to improve the current voltage regulation and to counter the problems with inconsistent energy feed-in of decentralized renewable energy producers. In this paper we discuss the possibilities of using 3 rd generation (3G) cellular networks (UMTS) as basic technology to communicate the voltage-levels within a medium-voltage grid. We build an experimental hardware setup to generate data-traffic as specified for the smart grid. By analyzing the performance of 3G cellular networks in terms of transmission latency and rate of failure, we tried to evaluate the usability of this technology for such critical data exchange. Though mobile communication in its structure is not specified for the use of transmitting such infrastructure critical data, the results show a promising high reliability with low transmission latency. The experiments served just to test a fragment of the conditions of use in a real scenario. An expanded test scope is needed to further analyze the performance of mobile radio for automatic control in smart grids. In the end the results discussed in this paper led to a successful prototype of an intelligent medium-voltage grid with mobile radio as communication technology. (Abstract)