Gateway placement for wirless mesh networks in smart grid network planning

Smart Grid components by nature, are spread over geographical locations, with generation points and consumption locations distributed and spread out on large areas, it is obvious that there is a need for a proper management of location intelligence. Location intelligence provides information essential for smart, efficient and self-healing systems. For upper management, it provides information used for making strategic decisions, mapping of customers, prospects and suppliers. Regarding operations, it gives information of different smart grid components such as smart meters, aggregators, substations, transformers and alternative energy sources. This paper deals with the placement of gateways for data aggregators in a Smart Grid, mainly for proposing a placement algorithm which increases the overall throughput of the network. The problem is treated from a networking point of view, by using wireless mesh networks as the communications environment and implementing a Maximum Traffic Flow Weight algorithm (MTFW) for defining an optimal position of gateways to data aggregators used in Automatic Metering Infrastructure (AMI). MTFW algorithm is tested by comparing it to other placement algorithms. It is further used for network planning implementation by using GIS data from a real life scenario. The resulting network plan is visualized with standard tool MapInfo Professional.