Admission Control‐Based Load Protection in the Smart Grid

This chapter describes effective admission control mechanisms for incoming loads to balance the demand and supply. It proposes a predictable, fine‐grained, fair, and proactive admission control approach, which, instead of reacting to an overload condition with a relatively short recovery time, detects and prevents overload upfront. The proposed admission control approach will guarantee continued operation of critical infrastructures and public safety‐related loads in case of special contingencies or emergency situations. The chapter presents a simulation study on admission control for incoming loads in the smart grid. It develops several load shedding mechanisms and analyzes their mode of operation and their effectiveness in maintaining the power balance between demand and supply. The chapter evaluates five load admission control scenarios using the capabilities of GridLAB‐D and GridMat simulation tools: the normal operation and overloaded system without admission control, brutal admission control, load‐size‐based admission control, priority‐based admission control, and fair priority‐based admission control.