Internet-based advanced metering and control infrastructure of smart grid

Abstract

Existing advanced metering infrastructures (AMI) use three levels of bi-directional communication between the customer and utility. Given the increase of the available amount of data provided by smart meters in smart grid, existing AMI network may not have the required bandwidth to perform the monitoring and control in real time. The increase of the AMI network bandwidth is very expensive. On the other hand, the internet employs a set of universal communication protocols and provides a wide communication bandwidth. A new internet-based advanced metering and control infrastructure (IBAMCI) is provided in this paper. It uses only two level of communication: the local area network (LAN) and the internet. Both LAN and internet platforms already exist in most consumer’s premise. The internet infrastructure when utilized eliminates the need for expensive bandwidth upgrades to the utility wide area network (WAN). The proposed IBAMCI is equipped with an integrated internet/cloud-based data management and control server, a user interface and display module. The consumer power consumption can be displayed from anywhere using the internet. Because the proposed IBAMCI offloads the utility WAN, real-time smart grid load monitoring and control becomes possible without delays. Simulations were carried out to illustrate the benefit of the proposed IBAMCI in monitoring large number of customer loads in real time. For existing AMIs, whenever the communication bandwidth becomes insufficient, the only option is to increase the utility network bandwidth, which can be prohibitively expensive.