Smart Grid Monitoring Applications Research Articles

Tensor-Based Dynamic Phasor Estimator Suitable for Wide Area Smart Grid Monitoring Applications

Tensor-Based Dynamic Phasor Estimator Suitable for Wide Area Smart Grid Monitoring Applications

Effect of Communication Failures on State Estimation of 5G-Enabled Smart Grid

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Wide Area Measurement Systems (WAMS) and state estimation represent the key-tools for achieving a reliable and accurate knowledge of the power grid, and represent the foundation of an information-based operation of Smart Grids. Nevertheless, ICT brings new potential vulnerabilities within the power grid operation, that need to be evaluated. The strong interdependence between power system and ICT systems requires new methodologies for modeling the smart grid as a Cyber Physical System (CPS), and finally analyzing the impact of ICT failures on the power grid operation. This paper proposes a novel methodological approach that combines Stochastic Activity Networks (SAN) modeling and numerical computation for dependability analysis of a 5G-based WAMS. Internal influences such as component failures and external influences such as rain effect are considered, and the impact of these failures are assessed over the WAMS capability to provide reliable data for performing an accurate power network state estimation. Different state estimation approaches (traditional SCADA and PMU-based algorithms) and weather conditions are compared in terms of mean states estimation error and safety. The results highlight that 5G based WAMS result in a close-to-ideal behavior which enforces the prospect of a future adoption for smart grid monitoring applications.

A Low Power WSNs Attack Detection and Isolation Mechanism for Critical Smart Grid Applications

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are effective tools in many smart grid applications such as remote monitoring, equipment fault diagnostic, wireless advanced metering infrastructure, and residential energy management. WSNs are attractive tools due to their low cost, dynamic nature, ruggedness, and low-power profile. Maintaining a low-power profile is a critical design factor in WSNs. Therefore, implementing sophisticated quality of service protocols and security mechanisms in WSNs is a challenging task. Furthermore, WSNs security mechanisms should not only focus on reducing the power consumption of the sensor devices but also they should maintain high reliability and throughput needed by smart grid applications. In this paper, we present a low-power cyber-security mechanism for WSNs-based smart grid monitoring applications. Our mechanism can detect and isolate various attacks such as the denial of sleep, forge, and replay attacks in an energy efficient way. The simulation results show that our mechanism can outperform existing techniques in power efficiency while maintaining constant delay and reliability values.

A Fiber-Wireless Sensor Networks QoS Mechanism for Smart Grid Applications

Smart grid applications, such as teleprotection, synchrophasors, remote condition monitoring, and control of assets, require timely and reliable data communication systems. Many communication architectures and solutions have been proposed to provide support for these smart grid applications, including fiber networks, wireless mobile networks, wireless sensor networks (WSNs), and so on. The use of heterogeneous solutions is an attractive architecture option since it combines the advantages of two or more communication systems to meet the delay and reliability requirements of the smart grid. Fiber-wireless sensor networks (Fi-WSNs) are gaining popularity as a reliable communication infrastructure in many other applications. This is due to the low cost, reliability, availability, the distributed nature of the WSNs, and the high bandwidth and reliability of the optical fiber networks. Although the Fi-WSNs systems can provide a good delay performance, they may not meet the requirements of the above smart grid delay-critical applications. In this paper, we propose a novel adaptive and cross-layer service differentiation mechanism for the Fi-WSNs. The proposed mechanism implements an adaptive scheduling mechanism and allows WSNs to cooperate with the optical network unit (ONU) to reduce the delay for high priority traffic. We determine the effects of the proposed mechanism on the quality of service (QoS) of delay critical smart grid monitoring applications in terms of the end-to-end delay and reliability. We show through simulations that our proposed QoS mechanism can reduce the end-to-end delay in the Fi-WSN system and in the long-reach passive optical networks (LR-PONs). We also show that our mechanism can outperform the existing techniques under the same traffic and network conditions.

Autonomous and traffic-aware scheduling for TSCH networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been recognized as a promising communication technology for smart grid monitoring and control applications. However, the deployment of WSNs in smart grid brought new challenges that pertain to the harsh electrical grid nature, and the different and often contradicting communication requirements of smart grid monitoring applications. MAC protocols play a crucial role to meet the reliability and latency requirements of WSN-based smart grid communications. In particular, the IEEE 802.15.4 TSCH (Time Slotted Channel Hopping), the latest generation of low-power and highly reliable MAC protocols, orchestrates the medium access according to a time-frequency communication schedule. However, TSCH specification does not provide any practical solution for the establishment of the schedule. Orchestra is a recent scheduling solution for TSCH that brings significant advantages such as, the use of simple scheduling rules, the low signaling overhead, and the high delivery ratio. Despite its unique features, Orchestra has the limitation of computing the TSCH schedule at each node independently from its traffic load, which can drastically affect the communication delay. This limitation makes Orchestra not sufficiently convenient for several delay-sensitive smart grid applications. Further, the current TSCH specification does not support traffic differentiation (i.e. handle all packets equally regardless of their criticality levels). In this paper, we propose an enhanced Orchestra-based TSCH protocol, called e-TSCH-Orch, that dynamically adjusts time slots assignment according to traffic load and criticality level. The performance analysis of e-TSCH-Orch shows that it significantly reduces the communication delay compared to the original Orchestra-based TSCH, while preserving the low signaling overhead and the high packet delivery ratio.

Delay Critical Smart Grid Applications and Adaptive QoS Provisioning

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are anticipated to be widely adopted in the various monitoring and control applications due to their versatility and low cost. One of the most promising and emerging WSNs applications is their use in monitoring smart grid assets. Although WSNs can provide cost efficient and reliable solutions, they are not suitable for delay critical application, because they were initially designed for low data rate applications and they may be challenged when sudden faults or failures occur in the monitored environments. Therefore, to prevent extensive delays of critical data, appropriate quality of service (QoS) techniques should be used. In this paper, we present an adaptive QoS scheme (AQoS) and an adaptive guaranteed time slot (AGTS) allocation scheme for IEEE 802.15.4-based WSNs used in high traffic intensity smart grid monitoring applications. Both AQoS and AGTS schemes can adaptively reduce the end-to-end delay and flexibly tune the GTS to provide the required QoS differentiation to delay critical smart grid monitoring applications.

Priority- and Delay-Aware Medium Access for Wireless Sensor Networks in the Smart Grid

Monitoring smart-grid assets in a timely manner is highly desired for emerging smart-grid applications such as transformer monitoring, capacitor bank control, plug-in hybrid-electric-vehicle load management, and power quality assessment. Wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) are anticipated to be widely utilized in a wide range of smart-grid applications due to their numerous advantages along with their successful adoption in various critical areas including military and health. For resource-constrained WSANs, transmitting delay-critical data from smart-grid assets calls for data prioritization and delay responsiveness. In this paper, we introduce two medium-access approaches, namely, delay-responsive cross-layer (DRX) data transmission and fair and delay-aware cross-layer (FDRX) data transmission, which aim to address the delay and service requirements of smart grids. DRX is based on delay-estimation and data-prioritization steps that are performed by the application layer, in addition to the MAC layer parameters responding to the delay requirements of the smart-grid application and the network condition. On the other hand, FDRX incorporates fairness into DRX by preventing a few nodes from dominating the communication channel. We provide a comprehensive performance evaluation of those approaches. We show that DRX reduces the end-to-end delay while FDRX has lower collision rate compared with DRX. We outline the tradeoffs regarding these approaches and draw future research directions for robust communication protocols for smart-grid monitoring applications.