Construction of a microgrid communication network

The advent of microgrids has made possible a host of applications geared toward the enhancement of the efficiency, reliability, resiliency, and sustainability of an electric power system. With a large penetration of microgrids in a power distribution system, a dedicated communication network infrastructure is needed to coordinate their control actions under various system operating conditions. This paper evaluates the ability of the current wireless communication infrastructure to meet some specific requirements and proposes some remedial actions. To this end, we have implemented communications models on the OPNETTM simulation tool and have investigated the impacts of latency and packet losses on the ability of microgrids' responses to some disturbances in the main grid. We found that the communications infrastructure must implement suitable channel access mechanisms for wireless transmission and must also support differentiated services to accommodate the variety of traffic patterns generated by the microgrids' control actions. If there are no differentiated services like the AQM, the performance of the controllers degrades.