Analytical Design of Synchrophasor Communication Networks with Resiliency Analysis Framework for Smart Grid

Abstract

The advent of synchrophasor technology has completely revolutionized the modern smart grid, enabling futuristic wide-area monitoring protection and control. The Synchrophasor Communication Network (SCN) is a backbone that supports communication of synchrophasor data among Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) and Phasor Data Concentrators (PDCs). The operator at the control center can visualize the health of the smart grid using synchrophasor data aggregated at PDCs from several PMUs. Since the core of the SCN is the existing IP network as an underlying communication infrastructure, the synchrophasor data is subjected to attacks that can compromise its security. The attacks, such as denial-of-service (DoS), can result in degradation of performance and even can disrupt the entire operation of the smart grid, if not controlled. Thus, a resilient SCN is a pertinent requirement in which the system continues to operate with accepted levels of performance even in response to the DoS. This article endeavors to propose a comprehensive resiliency framework for the SCN with enhanced resiliency metrics based on hardware reliability and data reliability. The proposed framework is deployed for a SCN pertaining to a practical power grid in India for its resiliency analysis. The proposed work can be regarded as a significant contribution to smart grid technology, as it provides a framework for resiliency analysis covering different aspects such as hardware reliability, data reliability, and parameters validation using the QualNet network simulator. Nevertheless, an analytical design of the hybrid SCN proposed in this work can even be extended to other topological designs of SCN.