MATEC Web of Conferences 41, 0 1 0 0 4 (2016 )

DOI: 10.1051/ m atecconf/ 2016 4 1 0 1 0 0 4


C Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2016

Communication challenges in Smart Grid

Eleftherios Tsampasis a, Dimitrios Bargiotas, Charalambos Elias, Lambros Sarakis

Technological Educational Institute of Sterea Ellada, Electrical Engineering Department, Psachna 34400, Greece

Abstract. Smart grid is not a system, application, network, or single device. It is no surprise that there is no unique
definition of the Smart Grid (SG): ABB says is an evolved grid system that manages electricity demand in a
sustainable, reliable and economic manner, built on advanced infrastructure and tuned to facilitate the integration of
all involved elements. However, the definitions from authoritative organizations follow a common theme: Smart grids
utilize information and communication technologies to manage the energy distribution and optimize the transmission
from suppliers to consumers and vice versa. Capacitor banks and reclosersneed the intelligent control to appropriately
adapt the supply to the demand. In this paper, we discuss communication systems and the requirements they have to
fulfill in the smart grid applications.

1 Introduction
A smart grid (SG), also called intelligent grid, intelligrid,
futuregrid, intergrid, or smart electrical/power grid, is an
enhancement of the 20thcentury power grid. The
traditional power grids (as shown in Figure 1) are
generally used to carry power from a few central
generators to a large number of users or customers.
Figure 2. Example of smart grid

Electric power systems are very complex physical

networks. According to NIST’s conceptual model [1] [2],
the Smart Grid consists of seven logical domains: Bulk
Generation, Transmission, Distribution, Customer,
Markets, Service Provider and Operations. The first four
feature the two way power and information flows. The
last three feature information collection and power
management in the Smart Grid.
A Smart Gird is an upgraded energy grid which enables
sensing, monitoring, communication and control of
Figure 1. Example of the traditional power grid middle and low voltage grids. Against this background,
the communication infrastructure must address the
In contrast, the SG (an example of which is shown following:
in Figure 2) uses two-way flows of electricity and xMatch the technical requirements.
information to create an automated and distributed xThe technology must be securing a stable
advanced energy delivery network utilizing modern environment to attract investments in Smart
information technologies and thus it is capable of Grid.
delivering power in more efficient ways and responding
xThe costs to achieve the required coverage,
to widely ranging conditions and events. For example,
installation and operation should be low.
once a medium voltage transformer failure event occurs
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows.
in the distribution grid, the SG may automatically change
Section 2 discusses various communications technologies
the power flow and recover the power delivery service
available for smart grids while section 3 describes the
immediately.
communication requirements in smart grids. Finally
Section 4 concludes the paper.
a
Corresponding author: [email protected]

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits XQUHVWULFWHGXVH
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Article available at http://www.matec-conferences.org or http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/20164101004
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2 Communication technologies available 2.3 Powerline Communication

for smart grids Powerline communications (PLC) uses the existing
The communication is one of the most critical elements power line infrastructure s to transmit high-speed (2–3
that enable smart grid applications. Different Mb/s) data signals from one device to the other for
communication technologies supported by two main communication purposes. This allows utility companies
communications media, wireless and wired, can be used to use a single infrastructure for power and data
for data transfer between smart meters and electric transmission. As a result of this, PLC systems have been
utilities. The information flow can be considered as the suggested as a cost-effective and painless solution to grid
concatenation of a flow from the sensor to the smart communication needs PLC technologies utilize existing
meters and of another flow between smart meters and the power cables for information exchange [5]. The majority
utility’s data centers. L. Wenpeng suggests in [3], the first of automatic meter readings deployments around the
data flow can be accomplished through wireless world are using PLC technologies for transmitting
communications or power line communication, such as metering data. However, the use of power lines to
ZigBee, and Z-wave; both technologies are ideal for provide reliable data transmissions has to face a number
home-area networks (HANs). of technical challenges due to the signal propagation
A smart metering communication system [4] consists of characteristics of typical power cables, such as high
the following components: signal attenuation, disruptive interference from other
power signals, including nearby electric appliances or
xSmart meter which is a two-way communicating
external electromagnetic sources [6]. It must be noted
device that records consumption of electric
that there are two major categories of PLC technologies
energy.
that operate in different bands and have different
xHome Area Network (HAN) which is an
capabilities. More specifically, there are narrowband PLC
information and communication network formed
(NB-PLC) technologies that operate in transmission
by appliances and devices within a home to
frequencies of up to 500 kHz; on the other category,
support different distributed applications
broadband PLC (BB-PLC) technologies, target
xNeighborhood Area Network (NAN) that collects significantly higher bandwidth performance than the first
data from multiple HANs and deliver the data to one (up to 200 Mbps).
a data concentrator; and finally
xWide Area Network (WAN) which is the data
transport network that carries metering data to 2.4 Digital Subscriber Lines
central control centers.
Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) provides digital data
Based on the data rate and coverage range, smart grid
transmission over the telephone lines. DSL connections
applications are grouped by their data rate and coverage
range required for their successful deployment. We now are dedicated point-to-point circuits which are always
turn our attention to the above mentioned technologies. connected and need no dial up. The phone line is used for
transmitting both the voice and Internet data requests
while keeping them separate. A DSL modem hooks up
2.1 ZigBee the computer to the phone line on the subscriber’s side. A
DSL access multiplexer on the service provider’s side
ZigBee is an IEEE 802.15.4-based specification for a takes requests from multiple users and sends them
suite of high-level communication protocols used to through a single connection to the internet. There are
create personal area networks with small, low-power different types of DSL services ranging in speeds from 16
digital radios. The technology defined by the ZigBee kbps to 52 Mbps.
specification is intended to be simpler and less expensive
than other wireless personal area networks (WPANs),
such as Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Applications include wireless 2.5 Cellular Network Communication
light switches, electrical meters with in-home-displays,
A cellular network is a radio network distributed over
traffic management systems, and other consumer and
land through cells where each cell includes a fixed
industrial equipment that requires short-range low-rate
location transceiver known as base station. These cells
wireless data transfer.
together provide radio coverage over larger geographical
areas. These networks can be a good option for
2.2 Wireless Mesh network (WMN) communicating between smart meters and the utility and
between far nodes.
In this network, nodes are comprised of mesh routers and Cellular network solutions also enable smart metering
mesh clients. Each node operates not only as a host but deployments spreading to a wide area environment. 2G,
also as a router, forwarding packets on behalf of other 3G, WiMAX, and LTE are the cellular communication
nodes that may not be within direct wireless transmission technologies available to utilities for smart metering
range of their destinations. A WMN is dynamically self- deployments.
organized and self-configured, with the nodes in the
network automatically establishing and maintaining mesh
connectivity among themselves (creating, in effect, an ad
hoc network).

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Figure 3. Communications Layer

political motives alignment, behavioral data mining

techniques will evolve quickly to match the desires of
3 Communication requirements in smart those who will take advantage of this information [9].
grids
The definition of privacy tends to vary among different
societies and cultures and as such, there is no clear list of
3.1 High Level Security Requirements categories of privacy that can be applicable for all.
However, four major types of privacy are generally
Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)states, one of the recognized
biggest challenges facing the smart grid deployment is xPersonal Privacy: this includes mainly body privacy
related to cyber security of the systems[1].Cyber security and territorial privacy
is a critical issue due to thein creasing potential of cyber- xInformation Privacy: this kind of privacy is mainly
attacks[7].and incidents against this critical sector as it related to passing of information over various
becomes more and more interconnected. Cyber security media and could also be called communications
must address not only deliberate attacks, such as privacy
industrial espionage, or terrorists, but inadvertent xOrganization Privacy: this includes the confidential
compromises of the information infrastructure due to information about an organization such as loss
human errors, equipment failures, and natural disasters. and profit statistics, current trend in the market,
future products, potential customers, transaction
3.2 Quality- of- Service related requirements details etc.
(QoS) xSpiritual and Intellectual Privacy: this kind of
privacy includes a person's spiritual nature, of
his feelings and his intellect [10].
The communication between the power supplier and
power customers is a key issue of the smart grid it is
necessary to guarantee Quality of Service (QoS) [6]for 3.4 Integrity
the communication and networking technology in all of
the stages of the Smart Grid, ranging from power Integrity refers to the trustworthiness of data or resources,
generation, transmission, distribution, to the customer and it is usually phrased in terms of preventing improper
applications. How to ensure the monitoring data, or unauthorized change. Integrity is the main aspect for
emergency response and control command can be computer and network security design [11]. By nature, it
reliably delivered within required time frame, but would is still crucial for securing the smart grid refers to
not be affected by the number of cell phone customers preventing undetected modification of information by
and their data traffic .To tackle this challenge, Wei Sun unauthorized persons or systems. For smart grid
[8] proposes to use a private wireless network dedicated communication systems, this applies to information such
for power distribution system monitoring. as product recipes, sensor values, or control commands.
This objective includes defense against information
3.3 Privacy modification via message injection, message replay, and
message delay on the network. Violation of integrity may
cause safety issues, that is, equipment or people may be
Privacy becomes an important concern when collecting harmed. The risk of attacks targeting data integrity in the
energy usage data with the deployment and adoption of power networks is indeed real. An example is in the
smart grid technologies. To protect such sensitive article [12], which proposed attack, called false data
information it is imperative that privacy protection injection attack, against the state estimation in the power
mechanisms be used to protect the privacy of smart grid grid. Confidentiality is the concealment of information or
users. Electricity usage information stored at the smart resources. The need for keeping information secret arises
meter and distributed thereafter acts as an information- from the use of computers in sensitive fields such as
rich side channel, exposing customers’ behaviors and smart grid, government and industry integrity and
habits. History has shown that where economic or

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confidentiality are two, main aspects for computer and http://www.nist.gov/smartgrid/InterimSmartGridRoa

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“Towards Privacy Protection in Smart Grid”,
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Cyber security and privacy issues in the smart grid are 11. Ye Yan, Yi Qian, Hamid Sharif and David Tipper “A
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engineering, and computer science. More in-depth Communications”.
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requirements that need to be met to ensure the reliable
operation of next generation electric power system. The
success of future smart grid depends heavily on the
communication infrastructure, devices, and enabling
services and software. As communication is an
underpinning technology for this huge development, we
envisage that smart grids will be an exciting research area
for communication engineers for many years to come.

References
1. Report to NIST on Smart Grid Interoperability
Standards Roadmap EPRI, Jun. 17, 2009 [Online].
Available:

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