Modeling of communication latency in smart grid

The goal of this paper is to model the communication latency among distributed intelligent agents because latency 1) is not zero, 2) is not constant, and 3) can have a significant impact on the higher-level capabilities of a smart grid installation, in particular any protection or coordination functions. Communication latency is considered an inherent parameter which affects the performance of the communication network — the backbone of the multi-agent system. Due to many stochastic factors in a communication environment, communication latency will be best modeled as a random parameter with a probability density function. The latency of sending/receiving messages among distributed intelligent agents is randomly generated based on user input data. In the numerical studies, two abnormal events occurring in the modified IEEE 34 node test feeder will be simulated to validate the proposed methodology. The simulation will measure how fast the smart grid responds to the disturbances when considering fixed latency, as well as random latency.