Measurement, Control and Monitoring in Smart Grids using NBIoT

Abstract

Traditional power grids are not suitable for the modern power demands. There are several drawbacks of traditional grids when it comes to the issues related to the modern power demands. Smart Grids (SGs) are the results of the failure of the traditional power grids. SGs have strong communication and networking support and Internet of things (IoT) is suitable for them. IoT provides the key sensing, measurement, control, and actuation related operations in S G. In fact, IoT is suitable for several critical applications in SG because it can be deployed at locations where human presence is not possible due to the dangers to human lives. Even large measuring and monitoring devices are not suitable for wide deployment in the S Gs. In such cases, critical information can be collected through IoT sensors and it can be sent directly to the data processing hubs of the SGs. As the sizes of SGs are large, it is obvious that large scale IoT deployments are needed to cover the whole SG networks. For this large scale deployment an energy efficient form of IoT is necessary. Narrowband IoT (NBIoT) is one such low energy version of the IoT. It is very much energy efficient and suitable for large scale deployments. This research work presents the general features of NBIoT and the motivation for using it for SG networks. The proposed research work mainly focus on the measurement, control and monitoring related applications in SGs. Further, the effectiveness of NBIoT for the long term sustainability related issues in SGs are illustrated.