Research on practicability of software defined network based communication network for smart grids

The safe and stable operation of power grid is critical to the national economy and society, and communication network is essential to the power grid operation and even more essential to smart grids, which is the more dependent on the communication than the traditional grids. With the expansion of the scale of power grid and the unceasing enhancement of requirement of power supply reliability and power quality from customers, higher requirements on the performance of communication network for the electric power system is expected accordingly. As a new type of network architecture, software defined network has characteristics of forwarding and control separation, logical central control, programmable open interface. It can effectively improve the performance of the communication network for power systems and make it possible to fulfill the requirement of smart grids. This paper starts from the developing requirements on the communication network for smart grids, discusses the possibility and advantages of introducing software defined network technologies into communication network for smart grids. By analyzing the features and advantages of software defined network and the characteristics of communication services of smart grids, the applicability of it in the communication network for smart grids is illustrated.