The Smart Grid, regarded as the next generation power grid, uses two-way flows of electricity and information to create a widely distributed automated energy delivery network. In this article, we survey the literature till 2011 on the enabling technologies for the Smart Grid. We explore three major systems, namely the smart infrastructure system, the smart management system, and the smart protection system. We also propose possible future directions in each system. colorred{Specifically, for the smart infrastructure system, we explore the smart energy subsystem, the smart information subsystem, and the smart communication subsystem.} For the smart management system, we explore various management objectives, such as improving energy efficiency, profiling demand, maximizing utility, reducing cost, and controlling emission. We also explore various management methods to achieve these objectives. For the smart protection system, we explore various failure protection mechanisms which improve the reliability of the Smart Grid, and explore the security and privacy issues in the Smart Grid.

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Smart Grid — The New and Improved Power Grid: A Survey

Smart Grid - The New and Improved Power Grid:

Network function virtualization (NFV) has drawn significant attention from both industry and academia as an important shift in telecommunication service provisioning. By decoupling network functions (NFs) from the physical devices on which they run, NFV has the potential to lead to significant reductions in operating expenses (OPEX) and capital expenses (CAPEX) and facilitate the deployment of new services with increased agility and faster time-to-value. The NFV paradigm is still in its infancy and there is a large spectrum of opportunities for the research community to develop new architectures, systems and applications, and to evaluate alternatives and trade-offs in developing technologies for its successful deployment. In this paper, after discussing NFV and its relationship with complementary fields of software defined networking (SDN) and cloud computing, we survey the state-of-the-art in NFV, and identify promising research directions in this area. We also overview key NFV projects, standardization efforts, early implementations, use cases, and commercial products.

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Network Function Virtualization: State-of-the-Art and Research Challenges

Information and communication technologies (ICT) represent a fundamental element in the growth and performance of smart grids. A sophisticated, reliable and fast communication infrastructure is, in fact, necessary for the connection among the huge amount of distributed elements, such as generators, substations, energy storage systems and users, enabling a real time exchange of data and information necessary for the management of the system and for ensuring improvements in terms of efficiency, reliability, flexibility and investment return for all those involved in a smart grid: producers, operators and customers. This paper overviews the issues related to the smart grid architecture from the perspective of potential applications and the communications requirements needed for ensuring performance, flexible operation, reliability and economics.

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A Survey on Smart Grid Potential Applications and Communication Requirements

A smart grid is a new form of electricity network with high fidelity power-flow control, self-healing, and energy reliability and energy security using digital communications and control technology. To upgrade an existing power grid into a smart grid, it requires significant dependence on intelligent and secure communication infrastructures. It requires security frameworks for distributed communications, pervasive computing and sensing technologies in smart grid. However, as many of the communication technologies currently recommended to use by a smart grid is vulnerable in cyber security, it could lead to unreliable system operations, causing unnecessary expenditure, even consequential disaster to both utilities and consumers. In this paper, we summarize the cyber security requirements and the possible vulnerabilities in smart grid communications and survey the current solutions on cyber security for smart grid communications.

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A Survey on Cyber Security for Smart Grid Communications

Currently, several smart grid efforts in US and Europe are gaining momentum. Even if there are different focuses in US and Europe on what is known as the smart grid, all agree on the fact, that standardization is a key issue. Hence, a lot of studies and roadmaps pick standardization in the context of smart grids out as a central theme. The various approaches are concentrating on different core areas, depending on the circumstances in which they were elaborated. However, no overview aligning these approaches exists. This contribution takes all relevant approaches up to now into account, which give concrete recommendations for smart grid standards. The approaches will be aligned, and a set of core standards will be identified to point out the most important fields for future research and development. Furthermore, the IEC TC 57 Seamless Integration Architecture SIA will be introduced and extended by future standards, which were identified as core standards and existing work not yet included in the SIA.

Survey of Smart Grid Standardization Studies and Recommendations

Within the Smart Grid, the combination of automation equipment, communication technology and IT is crucial. Interoperability of devices and systems can be seen as the key enabler of smart grids. Therefore, international initiatives have been started in order to identify interoperability core standards for Smart Grids. IEC 62357, the so called Seamless Integration Architecture, is one of these very core standards, which has been identified by recent Smart Grid initiatives and roadmaps to be essential for building and managing intelligent power systems. The Seamless Integration Architecture provides an overview of the interoperability and relations between further standards from IEC TC 57 like the IEC 61970/61968: Common Information Model - CIM.CIM has proven to be a mature standard for interoperability and engineering; consequently, it is a cornerstone of the IEC Smart Grid Standardization Roadmap. This book provides an overview on how the CIM developed, in which international projects and roadmaps is has already been covered and describes the basic use cases for CIM. This book has been written for both Power Engineers trying to get to know the EMS and business IT part of Smart Grid and for Computer Scientist finding out where ICT technology is applied in EMS and DMS Systems. The book is divided into two parts dealing with the theoretical foundations and a practical part describing tools and use cases for CIM.

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The Common Information Model CIM: IEC 61968/61970 and 62325 - A practical introduction to the CIM

The Common Information Model CIM

Several standardization efforts for Smart Grids in US and Europe are currently gaining momentum. Even if there are different focuses in US and Europe on what is known as the smart grid, all agree on the fact, that standardization is a key issue for a proper technical interoperability [4]. Hence, a lot of studies and roadmaps pick standardization in the context of smart grids out as a central theme. The various approaches are concentrating on different core areas, depending on the circumstances in which they were elaborated. However, no overview aligning these approaches exists. This contribution takes up on a previous paper [35] where relevant approaches were described. In the meantime, new approaches from different countries and initiatives have come up which are shortly described in this addendum to part1.

Michael Specht

Papers

Survey of Smart Grid Standardization Studies and Recommendations

The Common Information Model CIM: IEC 61968/61970 and 62325 - A practical introduction to the CIM

The Common Information Model CIM

Survey of Smart Grid standardization studies and recommendations — Part 2

Standardization in Smart Grids