After enactment of Electricity Act 2003 in India, a comprehensive change is happening in Indian power sector, and power distribution utilities are going through a reformation process to cope up with the regulatory change for reduction in Aggregated Technical and Commercial Loss, improvement in Power Quality, Reliability of Power Supply, Improvement in Customer Satisfaction and rationalization of electricity tariff. Apart from restructuring and unbundling of the power sector there is a need for introduction of `smart grid' technology to increase the operational as well technological efficiency of the power distribution network to meet the growing energy demand of India in line with the GDP growth of the country. Smart Grid is sophisticated, digitally enhanced power systems where the use of modern communications and control technologies allows much greater robustness, efficiency and flexibility than today's power systems. A smart grid impacts all the components of a power system especially the distribution level. One subset of smart grids is smart metering / advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) etc. In a smart grid, all the various nodes need to interconnect to share data as and where needed. Smart Grid envisages providing choices to each and every customer for deciding the timing and amount of power consumption based upon the price of the power at a particular moment of time, apart from providing choices to the consumer and motivating them to participate in the operations of the grid, causing energy efficiency and accommodating all generation and storage options, Smart Grid also envisages various properties for the Grid like self-healing and adaptive The suite of Smart Grid products and technologies help maximizing system uptime, while also helping the utility more quickly to restore power to homes and businesses in the event of an outage. Government of India has recently formed “Smart Grid Forum” and “Smart Grid Task Force” for en- - ablement of smart grid technology into Indian Power Distribution Utilities as a part of their Smart Grid initiative to meet their growing energy demand in similar with the developed country like USA, Europe etc. Read More»

This paper describes approaches to determine metrics, costs, and benefits from Smart Grid field projects including the 140 Smart Grid Investment Grants and Smart Grid Demonstration Projects funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The paper describes DOE's metrics and benefits framework that links Smart Grid technologies with their applications and the benefits that result from those applications. Benefits are derived by comparison of grid performance before and after installation and operation of Smart Grid components. These benefits are accrued to utilities/ratepayers, consumers, and society. There are significant challenges in attempting to collect field information and convert the information to metrics, costs, and benefits. For example, determining the monetary value of performance benefits such as reduced environmental emissions, reduced outages, and reduced peak load requires assumptions based on experience and must be rooted in solid technical and financial bases. Read More»

The IEEE Smart Grid Web Portal is an online resource that to date has been accessed by over 50 000 Smart Grid professionals, academics and other interested individuals from around the world. Launched in January of 2010, the IEEE Smart Grid Web Portal is a resource that converges and organizes all Smart Grid-related IEEE events, activities, news and assets into one place-accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Users can use the portal to view all upcoming conferences, browse publications and standards, access educational material and view various other IEEE-related content. The portal makes use of an illustrative conceptual model to show how the technical domains in the Smart Grid are interrelated. A novel application of this model provides an interactive gateway feature that allows users to navigate Smart Grid content based upon technical area of interest and filter it based upon date of creation. This paper describes the IEEE Smart Grid Web Portal for the purpose of orienting new users to the portal and details how individuals in the Smart Grid community-in particular those outside North America - can contribute to on-going relevance of this useful resource. Read More»

In this paper, we outline the Grid 2.0 Research, a collaborative Smart Grid research program between Gachon Energy Research Institute (GERI) of Kyungwon University and Bell Labs of Alcatel-Lucent. Salient features of the Grid 2.0 Research are the active role of distributed fixed and mobile energy storage, distributed renewable energy sources, and active load-side participation. Our focus is not on the energy storage itself but rather on the supporting infrastructure including communication network, security, and economics of the Smart Grid. Grid 2.0 Research views the Smart Grid as an ecosystem. In this regard, we pay close attention to the components and systems which require significant fundamental advancement or systems which do not exist today, thus requiring innovative solutions or greater sophistication. In order to realize a functioning ecosystem, critical components and tools of the envisioned Smart Grid are identified. This research work has been motivated by the Smart Grid roadmap of KEPCO and the Jeju Island Smart Grid Test-bed of Korea which will be discussed following the introduction section. Areas of research focus will be explained in a concise manner in the subsequent sections. Read More»

Along with the increasing development of power electronics, IT and communication technologies and the increasing trust in power supply for people, the construction of smart grid is becoming an important development direction of electric power industry throughout the world. As an important part of the smart grid, the smart distribution grid requires the terminal unit to realize information interaction and self-healing technique of the smart distributed grid. The traditional feeder terminal unit can not meet the requirements of the smart distribution grid and must be replaced by the intelligent terminal unit. Firstly, the model of the smart distribution grid is proposed. Secondly, the model of intelligent terminal unit is constructed and its structure and function are presented. Finally, the scheme of the intelligent terminal unit based fault detection, protection, location, isolation and restoration algorithms for smart distribution grid are presented. The simulation results show that the proposed method has high accuracy. It provides a strong support for smart grid to realize the information interaction and self-healing. Read More»

Development of “Smart grid” present one of global priority with numerous of benefits, which has to be supported and promote by leading industries and governments institutions. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector has to play important role because of development of modern telecommunication. This paper outlines and initially describes smart grid, smart grid architectures and smart grid management, and the crucial role of ICT in smart grid. This paper explain grid optimization, different concept of renewable energy sources and energy storage system used in smart grid, and present telecom hybrid power system as complex element of smart grid. Read More»

This paper describes various smart grid concepts, architectures, and details of associated technological demonstrations implemented worldwide. The survey is based on initiatives taken by EU and IEA (e.g. ETP, EEGI, EERA and IEA DSM) and description of projects conducted in Europe and US (e.g. FENIX, ADDRESS, EU-DEEP, ADINE, GridWise and SEESGEN-ICT). The report presents drivers, visions and roadmaps to develop smart grids worldwide including China and India. The survey encompasses various smart grid concepts, i.e. development of virtual power plant, active demand in consumer networks, DER aggregation business, active distribution network, and ICT applications to develop intelligent future grids. The comparison is carried out on the basis of commercial, technological, and regulatory aspects. In addition, the existing features of smart grid technology and challenges faced to implement it in Finish environment are addressed. As a matter of fact, the implementation of smart grid is consisting of more than any one technology, therefore, this transition will not be so easy. In the end, a fully realized smart grid will be beneficial to all the stakeholders. Smart grid will be an outcome of an evolutionary development of the existing electricity networks towards an optimized and sustainable energy system. Read More»

The future development trend of electric power grid is smart grid, which includes such features as secure and reliable, efficient and economical, clean and green, flexible and compatible, open and interactive, integrated and so on. The concept and characteristics of smart grid are introduced in this paper. On the basis of practical national situation, the development plans of smart grid in china with Chinese characteristics are proposed. Smart grid development in china is bases on information technology, communication technology, computer technology with the high integration with infrastructure of generating, transmission and distribution power system. Besides, smart grid development in china brings forward many new challenge and requirements for power system planning and operation in 9 key technologies as below: 1. Planning and construction of strong ultra high voltage (UHV) power grid 2. Large-scale thermal power, hydropower and nuclear power bases integration of power grid 3. Large-scale renewable energy sources integration of power grid 4. Distributed generation and coordinated development of the grids of various voltage ratings 5. Study on smart grid planning and developing strategy 6. Improve the controllability of the power grid based on power electronics technology. 7. Superconductivity, energy storage and other new technologies widely used in power system 8. Power system security monitoring, fast simulation, intelligent decision-making and comprehensive defense technology 9. The application of emergency and restoration control technology in power system In response to the challenge, this paper presents the main research contents, detailed implementation plan and anticipated goals of above 9 key technologies. Some measures and suggestions for power system planning and operation of smart grid development in China are given in this paper. Read More»

For 100 years, there has been no change in the basic structure of the electrical power grid. Experiences have shown that the hierarchical, centrally controlled grid of the 20th Century is ill-suited to the needs of the 21st Century. To address the challenges of the existing power grid, the new concept of smart grid has emerged. The smart grid can be considered as a modern electric power grid infrastructure for enhanced efficiency and reliability through automated control, high-power converters, modern communications infrastructure, sensing and metering technologies, and modern energy management techniques based on the optimization of demand, energy and network availability, and so on. While current power systems are based on a solid information and communication infrastructure, the new smart grid needs a different and much more complex one, as its dimension is much larger. This paper addresses critical issues on smart grid technologies primarily in terms of information and communication technology (ICT) issues and opportunities. The main objective of this paper is to provide a contemporary look at the current state of the art in smart grid communications as well as to discuss the still-open research issues in this field. It is expected that this paper will provide a better understanding of the technologies, potential advantages and research challenges of the smart grid and provoke interest among the research community to further explore this promising research area. Read More»

The smart grid is the latest direction for the future power system development. In this paper, firstly the background of smart grid, its meaning, as well as the concept and structure were presented. Typical diagram of smart grid was illustrated. Then, the current development of smart grid in United States and Europe were described, development ideas and the future trends in these countries were summarized and compared as well. Besides, the driving force of smart grid in China was analyzed, with detailed introduction of current related projects in China. The relation between the UHV power grid and the smart grid was discussed. Finally, the potential role of smart grid in future power grids in China was prospected and a new direction for China's smart grid development was charted. Read More»

With the unceasing rising consciousness of energy and environment, the demand of electrical power grid safe and steady running, as well as the requirement of high quality and reliable power supply for consumers, smart grid has been a common aim of power electric development of the whole world. The power grid in Sichuan of China is an extraordinary characteristic regional grid in the world wide. Undertaking smart grid research and implementation in Sichuan is necessary and of great foundation, and also processes practical significance for safe and stabilization of national power grid, optimization of national energy structure, and etc. In the paper, first of all, according to various definitions of smart grid in the world wide, the author's understandings of conception of smart grid are expatiated. And then the status of worldwide smart grid development is introduced and the enormous challenges which Chinese power enterprises are facing is analyzing, though which the inspiration of developing smart grid in China can be gained. At last, the status and characteristics of Sichuan power grid is also briefly introduced, and several suggestions in various aspects for Sichuan smart grid construction is prospected. Read More»

The market-oriented risks to the investments of the smart grid is exsited, due to the large investment, long operating cycle and a wide range of management of the smart grid and the uncertainty factors, such as the behaviors of members and volatility of price. And reasonable investment-benefit analysis of the investments will be an important way to prevent risks. The impact of the investment of smart grid on the grid companies is analysised on the operating performance, such as the costs of investment and operation and maintenance and equipment lifetime, and power demand.And the cost-effectiveness model of investments of smart grid is builded, containing an average annual intelligence estimate of investment costs and intelligent benefits. Take smart grid investments in one province as an example, and the results verify the efficiency and rationality of the model. Read More»

This paper presents an innovation Smart Power Management System on Smart Grid. This report consists of 5 major sections: smart power system modeling; real time power system monitoring; system engineering database collection and management; grid condition checking and maintenance; smart grid power system fault analysis. Smart Power Management System enables grid management and visualization to be very effective as it incorporates real time monitoring data and historic engineering data into an integrated system, analyzing scenarios based on various modules and making it possible to collect, monitor and control real time data with accuracy. Smart Power Management System modeling is based on a variety of factors according to regulation policies, grid management requirements and operation rules. Various scenario modules of Smart Power Management System can be developed and modified based on the client's specifications for its grid conditions and operation needs. Neural Networks adds an interesting flavor of intelligent modeling to this integrated system, which provides the most appropriate solution to solve important issues in power system engineering, system design, grid operation, maintenance and management. Intelligent functions of Smart Power Management System can also be modified via wireless channels to cell phones or other mobile devices for maintenance staff. Real time signals of abnormal system indications can be sent out to field maintenance and grid operation as required. Needleless to say, Smart Power Management System makes it possible that all desired functions can be integrated so as to support complete automation control for un-manned power system substations in the future, to monitor real time system information, to update real time system data, to identify grid weakness points, to help field maintenance keep power system facilities in a good working condition, to conduct power systems fault analysis and operator training, to effectively support field - aintenance, system troubleshooting and repair and to provide emergency contingencies to power system maintenance, operations, control centers for smart grid management and visualization. Read More»

Smart Grid security is very important subject. Vulnerabilities from cyber, smart meter, zone management, protection procedures and security assessment will make Smart Gird risk. IEC Smart Grid Standardization, IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and National Standard of People's Republic of China are developing the corresponding security standards for Smart Grid. In this paper, we summarized Smart Grid security key standards NIST Inter agency Report 7628, IEC 61850 & GB/T22239 security classified protection standards, IEC 62351 on Smart Grid security, ISO/IEC 15408 & GB18336 security assessment standards and ISO 27001& GB/T22080 information security management standards. We summarized the security technology in Smart Grid which the international organization are developing the corresponding standards. State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) has begun to develop standards on the IEC in UHV power transmission, high/ultra high voltage direct current transmission aspects. Read More»

The concept of smart grid to transform the age-old power grid into a smart and intelligent electric power distribution system is, currently, a hot research topic. Smart grid offers the merging of electrical power engineering technologies with network communications. Game theory has featured as an interesting technique, adopted by many researchers, to establish effective smart grid communications. The use of game theory, to date, has offered solutions to various decision making problems, ranging from distributed load management to micro storage management in smart grid. Interestingly, different researchers have different objectives or problem scopes for adopting game theory in smart grid. Nevertheless, all the game theoretic approaches for making effective smart grid solutions have a common aspect, namely the Nash equilibrium, arriving at which may lead to an optimal solution to the relevant problem. In this paper, we survey a number of game theory-based applications to solve different problems in smart grid. This survey reveals that game theory can be apparently simple yet become an effective technique to facilitate intelligent decision making in smart grid frameworks. Read More»

The intent of this paper is to inspire the utility industry's forward thinking by revisiting past accomplishments and examining today's technologies to definitively define a smart grid. The author proposes that a substantial foundation for the future Smart Grid has been established throughout his utility's long history and visionary efforts, which have forged its smart grid strategy based on five key smart grid themes. Southern California Edison's five keys to a successful Smart Grid - renewable, distributed energy resources and storage integration, grid control and asset optimization, workforce effectiveness, smart metering, and energy smart customer solutions - have been evolving for decades and will guide smart grid advancements efforts well into the future. Read More»

The power grid, especially distribution grid, has been more complicated due to distributed generations (DGs) with renewable energy sources and the smart grid. The complexity changes two things in terms of a fault; higher prospective fault current and the temporal variation of sources and loads. To correspond to those remarkable changes, we propose a fault current controller (FCC) named “smart FCC.” The smart FCC consists of a superconducting coil with a freewheeling diode if necessary, four thyristors, and a control unit. Smart FCC can not only limit but also control the current when a fault occurs. The smart grid technology can provide so enough information that it is possible to estimate which level of limited current should be the best in the real-time situation of the grid. Based on a real-time calculation of optimal fault current using the smart grid monitoring technologies, this new device is always ready to adjust the fault current. In this paper, we introduce a concept of the smart FCC and prove the concept. Various topologies have been proposed and simulated. Finally, a case study on a distribution class of 22.9 kV smart FCC has been conducted based on a conceptional system design. Read More»

Smart Grids is a common denominator for a wide range of developments that make medium and low voltage grids more intelligent and flexible than they are nowadays. Main motive for Smart Grid initiatives is that such developments improve reliability of supply and/or support the trend towards a more sustainable energy supply. At this moment, medium and low voltage networks can not be remotely observed and controlled. Various companies are developing technologies aiming at creating smarter networks. However, these developments tend to root in technological possibilities, rather than in a sound problem analysis and a structured approach towards its solution. In the recent past, a great variety of sensors, protocols, communication equipment and the like has been designed to support the move towards Smart Grids. However, many of them have not found wide application, which can be at least partly attributed to the fact that there were no "problems" for which they provided a solution so that it was not possible to draw up a positive business case. In summary, there was too much technology push and too little market pull. The fact that some of manufacturers of unsuccessful technologies even blame network operators as conservative instead of improving the price performance ratio of their products further hampers a real take off of Smart Grids. Notwithstanding the mixed present picture, Enexis has high expectations of the future of Smart Grid technologies. In the short term, Enexis focuses on applying Smart Grid technologies for improving the reliability of supply through increasing the speed of restoration after an interruption. To this end, Enexis has planned the large-scale deployment of remote control on certain points in the medium voltage networks to detect and localize outages due to component failures. This makes it no longer necessary to rely on phone calls of people whose lights and televisions turn off for outage detection and makes fault location much quicker. Smart G- - rid technologies can thus battle the expected increase in component failures, the inevitable consequences of an ageing infrastructure. In the longer term, Smart Grid technologies will play an important role in maintaining reliability of supply and improving sustainability. The complexity of electricity distribution increases. Gardeners connect CHP plants to the grids and the number of wind turbines increases. This also applies for small generators, such as micro CHP plants and PV panels. Smart Grids support these developments by continuously monitoring and controlling the grid and the generators. Enexis believes that effective deployment of Smart Grid technologies requires a top down approach. Therefore Enexis is developing a vision on the role of the medium and low voltage networks in a sustainable energy future. With Enexis' vision becoming clearer over time, ever greater efforts will be spent on developing the appropriate and necessary Smart Grid technologies in cooperation with commercial energy companies, other grid operators and suppliers, as well as to increasingly focused discussions with the regulator and the government on the future energy supply and the role of Smart Grids in it. Read More»

Recently, power distribution grid is moving toward a smart grid where energy generation is decentralized and the grid adapts to demands. Due to the most cost-effective way for two-way communication, the use of power line distribution grid for data communication of smart meters has gained higher interests by utility companies. This paper presents the smart grid system with power line communication (PLC). The system serves as the communication infrastructure linking smart meters through the PLC network. The characteristics of PLC multipath channel and the noise model are presented. The smart meters and PLC are modeled based on the actual distribution grid data to set the model for analyzing the feasibility and performance of a smart grid. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) modulation technique is used to improve better performance and higher efficiency. Simulation results on different loading conditions have confirmed the performance of OFDM when operating in a power line channel in smart grid system. Read More»

Nowadays the big picture of future power system development is driven by intelligent automation of electrical distribution networks. This might lead to a paradigm change in network design and it will definitely lead to paradigm change in network operation. Looking to smart or intelligent grid initiatives the whole issue can be divided into three main topics: smart generation, smart grid and smart customer. The "smart" grid as the connecting system has to consider developments in smart generation and smart customer technologies as well as to force the right investment. On the one hand it will be expected that smart technologies will lead to reduced investment in primary equipment and it will lead to higher availability of power supply. On the other hand decentralized generation in low and medium voltage networks and an increasing number of potential electrical consumers will lead to a more complex operation in future, and adequate control centers are strongly needed. A well structured medium and low voltage network has been taken to analyze the impact of smart technology into the grid. Smart components which are needed to operate a smart grid will be specified. The specification will be done for generation, loads and control function taking into account visions of future requirement. On the basis of these assumptions and the actual network design the paper describes the challenges in network planning. The paper shows the effects of smart grid technology for the extension scenarios of the electrical networks. It will be shown how distribution automation with intelligent functions helps to reduce investment in primary equipment and increase network reliability. The clear structure of the power system leads to simple control function und clear rules. It can be shown that the structure of the network can stay the same and the utilities can follow different possibilities to operate the network. The paper describes the scenarios for network planning under consideration of - - new parameters to control load and generation. Up to now the key driver / factor for new investment in the grid was the equipment loading under (n-1) or other reliability-based contingency scenarios. The network condition could easily be calculated out of the few measured values in the control center. Based on the results planning scenarios lead to the necessary measures. In future the maximum equipment loading measured in today's control centers are not enough to derive any measurements and planning scenarios will increase. The paper shows simple key drivers for action in network development. Read More»

Communication networks play a critical role in smart grid, as the intelligence of smart grid is built based on information exchange across the power grid. In power transmission segments of smart grid, wired communications are usually adopted to ensure robustness of the backbone power network. In contrast, for a power distribution grid, wireless communications provide many benefits such as low cost high speed links, easy setup of connections among different devices/appliances, and so on. Connecting power equipment, devices, and appliances through wireless networks is indispensable for a smart distribution grid (SDG). However, wireless communications are usually more vulnerable to security attacks than wired ones. Developing appropriate wireless communication architecture and its security measures is extremely important for an SDG. Thus, these two problems are investigated in this paper. Firstly, a wireless communication architecture is proposed for an SDG based on wireless mesh networks (WMNs). The security framework under this communication architecture is then analyzed. More specifically, potential security attacks and possible counter-attack measures are studied. Within the security framework, a new intrusion detection and response scheme, called smart tracking firewall, is developed to meet the special requirements of SDG wireless communications. Performance results show that the smart tracking firewall can quickly detect and respond to security attacks and is thus suitable for real-time operation of an SDG. Read More»

There is growing interest in renewable energy resources and smart grid. Since most renewable sources are highly intermittent, they can induce significan fluctuation on the supply side of the power grid. On the other hand, the use of smart meters and smart appliances in the smart grid can cause significan uncertainties on the demand side as well. Unit commitment scheduling of power generation systems is an important issue in smart grid communications to coordinate energy demand and generation. In this paper, we study the stochastic unit commitment problem in smart grid communications. Hidden Markov models (HMMs) are used for renewable energy resources. The stochastic power demand loads are modeled by a Markov-modulated Poisson process (MMPP). We show that, under reasonable conditions on the smart grid, structural results can be derived for the unit commit problem, which make the solution practically useful. Simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed schemes. Read More»

The Smart Grid, regarded as the next generation power grid, uses two-way flows of electricity and information to create a widely distributed automated energy delivery network. In this article, we survey the literature till 2011 on the enabling technologies for the Smart Grid. We explore three major systems, namely the smart infrastructure system, the smart management system, and the smart protection system. We also propose possible future directions in each system. Specifically, for the smart infrastructure system, we explore the smart energy subsystem, the smart information subsystem, and the smart communication subsystem. For the smart management system, we explore various management objectives, such as improving energy efficiency, profiling demand, maximizing utility, reducing cost, and controlling emission. We also explore various management methods to achieve these objectives. For the smart protection system, we explore various failure protection mechanisms which improve the reliability of the Smart Grid, and explore the security and privacy issues in the Smart Grid. Read More»

The smart grid concept was introduced to the US utility industry by the Department of Energy (DOE). It was based on the visions of DOE's Grid 2030 and National Electric Delivery Technologies Roadmap. The debate over what constitutes a smart grid is still emerging. Nevertheless, we all agree that smart grid concept is complex and contains many interdisciplinary technologies and strategies. It is difficult to view smart grid as separated technologies. Smart grid is not to develop an entire new system from scratch. Smart grid effort is to realize and leverage multiple disciplines that have been evolving during the past ten-twenty years. And, it is to take enterprise approaches to improve utility business operations and customer services. Intelligence of grid comes from integration. We believe analytics and information integration are building blocks of smart grids. Read More»

This paper presents the architecture and the content available in the Smart Grid Information Clearinghouse (SGIC) web portal. Emphasis is placed on providing an overview of the on-going smart grid projects and the deployment experience derived from project implementation. Information about smart grid projects worldwide is presented by their geographic locations and project categories. Examples of deployment experience information on the SGIC web portal are discussed. Available deployment experience information is related to use cases, lessons learned, cost-benefit analyses and business cases. Then, this paper presents opportunities for contributing smart grid related content via the SGIC online content submission platform. Read More»