HANDBOOK ON GREEN INFORMATION AND
COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
Chapter 25:
Smart Grid Communications:
Opportunities and Challenges
Hussein T. Mouftah and Melike Erol-Kantarci
University of Ottawa
© University of Ottawa, ON, Canada
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Outline
Introduction to Smart Grid
Communication Technologies for Smart Grid
 Wireless CommunicationTechnologies
 Wired CommunicationTechnoliges
Communication Enabled Smart Grid Applications
Challenges in Smart Grid Communications
Summary and Conclusions
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Introduction
Problems of the traditional electricity grid:
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Demand is growing
Fossil fuel reserves are diminishing
Costs are increasing
Aging infrastructure
Reliability
Renewable energy resources are not widely used
Demand management is weak
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Introduction
Smart grid integrates Information and
Communication Technology (ICT) to the power
systems for:
 Increased reliability
 More Security
 Better efficiency
 Reduced environmental impacts
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Smart Grid
 Generation
 Coordination of renewable generation
 Storage
 Coordination of electric vehicle charging and
discharging
 Transmission and Distribution
 Monitoring the utility assets
 Demand
 Load and energy production
management for the residential consumers
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The Big Picture
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Communication Technologies for the Smart Grid
Wireless Communication Technologies:
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IEEE 802.15.4
Z-wave
IEEE 802.11
IEEE 802.16
LTE/LTE-A
IEEE 802.22
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Communication Technologies for the Smart Grid
Wired Communication Technologies
 Power Line Communications
• IEEE P1901/Broadband over Power Lines
• ITU-T G.hn
• ANSI/CEA-709
 Wireline Communication Technologies
• Fiber Optical Communications
• Ethernet
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IEEE 802.15.4- Zigbee
Zigbee is a short-range, low-data rate, energyefficient wireless protocol
Zigbee utilizes
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16 channels in the 2.4GHz ISM band worldwide
13 channels in the 915MHz band in North America
one channel in the 868MHz band in Europe
It supports data rates of 250 kbps, 100kbps, 40 kbps,
and 20 kbps
ZigBee Smart Energy Profile (SEP) aims to support
the needs of smart metering and AMI, and provide
communication among utilities and household
devices
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Z-wave
Z-Wave is a proprietary, short-range, low-data
rate wireless RF mesh networking standard
Z-wave uses the 908MHz ISM band in the
Americas, and its data rate is 40kbps
Z-wave provides connectivity for devices such
as; lamps, switches, thermostats, garage doors.
 Z-wave can be employed in the HAN segment of the
smart grid
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IEEE 802.11 - WiFi
Data rate of IEEE 802.11 standards range from 1
Mbps to 100 Mbps
 It operates in the 2.4 GHz ISM band
Wi-Fi is targeting Home Area Networks (HAN),
Neighborhood Area Networks (NAN) and Field
Area Networks (FAN) in the smart grid
Wi-Fi is already being used for municipal-scale
network infrastructures outdoors
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IEEE 802.16 - WIMAX
WIMAX uses the licensed bands of 10-66 GHz
 The IEEE 802.16 standard also allows the use of licenseexempt sub 11GHz bands
WIMAX can provide theoretical data rates up to
70Mbps
The communication range is around 50km for fixed
stations and almost 5km for mobile stations
WIMAX can provide long range communications for
the smart grid
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LTE and LTE-A
The peak data rates for LTE is around 300Mbps at
the downlink and 80Mbps at the uplink with 20MHz
channel bandwidth and 4x4 MIMO antennas
 LTE-A’s targeted peak downlink transmission rate is
1Gbps and the uplink transmission rate is 500Mbps
A typical LTE cell has a diameter of 4km
 By relaying technique, range can be extended
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IEEE 802.22 –Cognitive Radio
Cognitive Radio (CR) provides access to unlicensed
users to the spectrum that is not utilized by
licensed users
 A CR has the ability to sense unused spectrum, use it and
then vacate as soon as a licensed user arrives
The bands that are planned to be used by 802.22
are the UHF/VHF bands between 54 and 862 MHz
and their guard bands
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Power Line Communications
Power Line Communications (PLC) use the low
voltage power lines as the communication medium
PLC has been already used by some utilities for load
control and remote metering
 It can be integrated to the smart metering system since
the power lines already reach the meter
As the PLC does not have external cabling cost, it
is considered to be convenient for HANs, NANs
and FANs in the smart grid
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IEEE P1901/Broadband over Power Lines
BPL has high data rates exceeding 100 Mbps using
frequencies below 100 MHz
P1901 workgroup has selected two physical layers
for the standard
 Wavelet OFDM-based PHY
 FFT OFDM-based PHY.
These PHY techniques aim to improve the
communication over the noisy power lines
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ITU-T G.hn
G.hn standard is developed for communication in
residential premises, offices, hotels, etc.
G.hn is able to operate over all types of in-home
wiring including phone line, power line, coaxial cable,
and Cat-5 cable
 It uses a windowed OFDM-based PHY with a
programmable set of parameters
G.hn can support bit rates up to 1Gbps
G.hn devices aim to be interoperable with power
line devices that use the IEEE P1901 standard
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ANSI/CEA-709
ANSI/CEA-709 series of standards have been
developed for home control and automation
ANSI/EIA 709.1 is also known as Lonworks
 Lonworks platform is a proprietary technology
 Lonworks operates in the 115-132MHz band
 Data rates of Lonworks can reach up to a few kbps
NIST has included Lonworks as a candidate
standard along with IEEE P1901 and ITU G.hn
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Fiber Optic Communications
Fiber optics is already used in the power grid to
connect utility head offices and substations
Fiber optics is not impacted by electromagnetic
interference
 It is ideal for the high voltage operating environment
 Its major drawback of fiber is high deployment cost
Optic Ethernet can be also utilized in the smart
grid
It is also possible to employ a combination of the
wireless and wired communication technologies in
the smart grid
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Comparison of Communication Standards
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Communication Enabled Smart Grid Applications
Direct Load Control (DLC)
Wireless sensor network (WSN)-based demand
management
iPower
Sensor web services for energy management
Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications based
demand management
Energy saving applications on appliances
Electric vehicle demand management
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Direct Load Control (DLC)
DLC means passing the control of several appliances
to the utility or an aggregator
 Appliances that can be remotely controlled are pool
pumps and the heating/cooling appliances
 A pilot study in Australia has shown that cycling air
conditioners have resulted in 17% of peak load reduction
DLC requires simple communications between the
consumers and the utility
 Utility commands can be delivered to the customers
through smart meters
Zigbee or one of the PLC standards can be a
suitable option for DLC
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Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)-based Demand
Management
in-Home Energy Management (iHEM) is a nonintrusive, interactive demand management scheme
Energy Management Unit and appliances
communicate wirelessly over the WSN
iHEM aims to shift consumer demands to off-peak
hours
Unlike, DLC, iHEM suggests convenient start times
for the appliances
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Intelligent and Personalized energy conservation
system by wireless sensor networks (iPower)
iPower:
 Implements an energy conservation application for multidwelling homes and offices
 Employs a WSN, a control server, power-line control
devices and user identification devices
 Sensor nodes are deployed in each room and they monitor
the rooms with light, sound and temperature sensors
 They form a multi-hop WSN and send their
measurements to the gateway when an event occurs
iPower combines wireless and power line
communication technologies
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Sensor web services for energy management
Energy management application is a suit of three
energy management modules:
 The first module enables users to learn the energy
consumption of their appliances while they are away from
home
 The second module is a load shedding application for the
utilities
• Load shedding is applied to the air conditioning appliances when
the load on the grid is critical
 The third module offers an application for energy
generating customers
• Customers can monitor and control the amount of energy stored
and energy sold back to the grid while they are away from home
These applications utilize sensor web services
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Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications based
demand management
M2M communications have been implemented in the
Whirlpool Smart Device Network (WSDN)
WSDN consists of HAN, the Internet and AMI
WSDN utilizes several technologies together
 Wi-Fi connects the smart appliances and forms the HAN
 ZigBee and PLC connect the smart meters in the AMI
 Broadband Internet connects consumers to the Internet
It enables remote access to appliance energy
consumption
It also provides load shedding capabilities to
utilities during critical peaks
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Energy saving applications on appliances
An appliance-to-appliance communication protocol
for energy saving applications
Energy management protocol allows consumers to
set a maximum consumption value
Based on this threshold, the residential gateway is
able to turn off the appliances that are in standby
mode once these limits are exceeded
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Electric vehicle demand management
Home Gateway and Controller (HGC) communicates
with the PHEV
 Controls its charging and discharging profile based on
• Status of the roof-top solar power generation unit
• Demands of the smart appliances
 HGC also communicates with the other HGC devices in
the neighborhood and coordinates PHEV loads
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Challenges in Smart Grid Communications
Wireless channels are
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Prone to interference due to the populated ISM bands
Have lower bandwidth than wired communication technologies
Do not penetrate well through concrete construction
Their range is limited
The impact of harsh smart grid environment on wireless
communications is not explored well
Powerline communications suffer from
• Noisy channel conditions
• Channel characteristics that vary depending on the devices
plugged in
• Electromagnetic interference (EMI) due to unshielded power
lines
• Poor isolation among units
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Security in Smart Grid Communications
The potential security risks identified by NIST:
 Increased complexity causing device misconfiguration
based errors
 Increased number of interconnections increase the risks
of denial of service attacks, injection of malicious
software and compromised hardware
 Increased number of network nodes increase the number
of entry points and paths that might be exploited by
adversaries
 Increased amount of data increase the risk of
compromising data and violating user privacy
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Privacy in Smart Grid Communications
Consumer privacy may be violated if high resolution
electricity consumption data is made available to
malicious users
 By looking at the consumption, it is possible to obtain
information on absence or presence, the number of
individuals in the property, sleep cycles, meal times, etc.
 A PHEV’s location can be tracked from its charging
location
Sophisticated attacks may benefit from data
leakage from consumer premises
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Summary and Conclusions
 Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are
eventually becoming integrated to electrical power grid to
improve the grid’s reliability, efficiency, security and
reduce its environmental impact
 Available communication technologies can be considered as
foundations for yet-to-emerge smart grid communication
technologies that will truly answer the needs of the smart
grid
 More research is needed to overcome the challenges of
communication in the smart grid environment
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Thanks for your
attention!
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