Reference Architectures for Smart Grids: Towards a Standard-based Comparative Framework

To overcome the challenge of the architectural design of smart grid as complex system of systems, several Smart Grid Reference Architectures (SGRAs) have been developed. These architectures not only guide the design and implementation of smart grid, but also address the critical underlying issues like security and interoperability. However, existing SGRAs are neither lexically aligned, nor structured alike. This impedes their understanding, transferability to other projects, and hence dissemination, essentially in the absence of a unified framework for analyzing them. To fill this research gap, the current paper proposes a standard-based framework for comparing SGRAs. By clarifying the similarities and differences, such framework would be actionable for both academics and practitioners who are interested in, but not acquainted with the SGRAs. Moreover, being standard-based, the proposed framework paves the way for improving and aligning legacy and future SGRAs. Hence, it yields a first step towards a unified framework for SGRAs comparison. For the sake of validity, the framework is applied to two well-known SGRAs.