A survey of communication/networking in Smart Grids

Smart Grid is designed to integrate advanced communication/networking technologies into electrical power grids to make them "smarter". Current situation is that most of the blackouts and voltage sags could be prevented if we have better and faster communication devices and technologies for the electrical grid. In order to make the current electrical power grid a Smart Grid, the design and implementation of a new communication infrastructure for the grid are two important fields of research. However, Smart Grid projects have only been proposed in recent years and only a few proposals for forward-looking requirements and initial research work have been offered in this field. No any systematic reviews of communication/networking in Smart Grids have been conducted yet. Therefore, we conduct a systematic review of communication/networking technologies in Smart Grid in this paper, including communication/networking architecture, different communication technologies that would be employed into this architecture, quality of service (QoS), optimizing utilization of assets, control and management, etc. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.