Smart-grid communications and standards

A reliable and efficient communication and networking infrastructure will connect the functional elements within the smart grid. Different physical data communication technologies for the smart grid will empower the legacy power grid with the capability to support two-way energy and information flow. The smart grid will rely on several existing and future wired and wireless communication technologies (e.g., power line communication, cellular network, internet protocol networks, ZigBee, Wi-Fi, Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, etc.). Also, advanced techniques for accessing the network and routing the information to the different nodes of the network will be required. In this chapter, we discuss smart-grid communication network and divide it into three tiers, i.e., home area network, neighborhood area network, and wide-area network. We present smart-grid communication technologies, standards, and protocols for the physical layer operations. We next discuss the medium access control (MAC) and network layer protocols of the smart-grid communication technologies. In the end, we present a case study for the implementation and performance evaluation of various smart-grid algorithms and communication infrastructure.