Smart grid

The smart grid is an enhancement of the 20th century electrical grid, using two-way communications and distributed so-called intelligent devices. Two-way flows of electricity and information could improve the delivery network. Research is mainly focused on three systems of a smart grid: the infrastructure system, the management system, and the protection system. Electronic power conditioning and control of the production and distribution of electricity are important aspects of the smart grid. The smart grid represents the full suite of current and proposed responses to the challenges of electricity supply. Numerous contributions to the overall improvement of energy infrastructure efficiency are anticipated from the deployment of smart grid technology, in particular including demand-side management. The improved flexibility of the smart grid permits greater penetration of highly variable renewable energy sources, such as solar power and wind power, even without the addition of energy storage. Smart grids could also monitor/control residential devices that are noncritical during periods of peak power consumption, and return their function during nonpeak hours. A smart grid includes a variety of operation and energy measures: Advanced metering infrastructure (of which smart meters are a generic name for any utility side device even if it is more capable e.g., a fiber optic router) Smart distribution boards and circuit breakers integrated with home control and demand response (behind the meter from a utility perspective) Load control switches and smart appliances, often financed by efficiency gains on municipal programs (e.g., PACE financing) Renewable energy resources, including the capacity to charge parked electric vehicle (EV) batteries or larger arrays of batteries recycled from these, or other energy storage. Energy efficient resources Electric surplus distribution by power lines and auto-smart switch Sufficient utility grade fiber broadband to connect and monitor the above, with wireless as a backup. Sufficient spare if "dark" capacity to ensure failover, often leased for revenue. Concerns with smart grid technology mostly focus on smart meters, items enabled by them, and general security issues. Roll-out of smart grid technology also implies a fundamental re-engineering of the electricity services industry, although typical usage of the term is focused on the technical infrastructure. Smart grid policy is organized in Europe as Smart Grid European Technology Platform. Policy in the United States is described in Title 42 of the United States Code. Smart grids are not to be confused with sector coupled smart energy systems, as smart grids primarily refers to the power sector, while smart energy systems use an integrated holistic focus which also includes other sectors of the energy system with the intent to create synergies between them.

Background

Modernization opportunities

Since the early 21st century, opportunities to take advantage of improvements in electronic communication technology to resolve the limitations and costs of the electrical grid have become apparent. Technological limitations on metering no longer force peak power prices to be averaged out and passed on to all consumers equally. In parallel, growing concerns over environmental damage from fossil-fired power stations have led to a desire to use large amounts of renewable energy. Dominant forms such as wind power and solar power are highly variable, and so the need for more sophisticated control systems became apparent, to facilitate the connection of sources to the otherwise highly controllable grid. Power from photovoltaic cells (and to lesser extent wind turbines) has also, significantly, called into question the imperative for large, centralised power stations. The rapidly falling costs point to a major change from the centralised grid topology to one that is highly distributed, with power being both generated and consumed right at the limits of the grid. Finally, growing concern over terrorist attacks in some countries has led to calls for a more robust energy grid that is less dependent on centralised power stations that were perceived to be potential attack targets.

Definition of "smart grid"

Early technological innovations

Smart grid technologies emerged from earlier attempts at using electronic control, metering, and monitoring. In the 1980s, automatic meter reading was used for monitoring loads from large customers and evolved into the Advanced Metering Infrastructure of the 1990s, whose meters could store how electricity was used at different times of the day. Smart meters add continuous communications so that monitoring can be done in real-time, and can be used as a gateway to demand response-aware devices and "smart sockets" in the home. Early forms of such demand side management technologies were dynamic demand aware devices that passively sensed the load on the grid by monitoring changes in the power supply frequency. Devices such as industrial and domestic air conditioners, refrigerators, and heaters adjusted their duty cycle to avoid activation during times the grid was suffering a peak condition. Beginning in 2000, Italy's Telegestore Project was the first to network large numbers (27M) of homes using smart meters connected via low bandwidth power line communication. Some experiments used the term broadband over power lines (BPL), while others used wireless technologies such as mesh networking promoted for more reliable connections to disparate devices in the home as well as supporting metering of other utilities such as gas and water. Monitoring and synchronization of wide-area networks were revolutionized in the early 1990s when the Bonneville Power Administration expanded its smart grid research with prototype sensors that are capable of very rapid analysis of anomalies in electricity quality over very large geographic areas. The culmination of this work was the first operational Wide Area Measurement System (WAMS) in 2000. Other countries are rapidly integrating this technology—China started having a comprehensive national WAMS when the past 5-year economic plan was completed in 2012. The earliest deployments of smart grids include the Italian system Telegestore (2005), the mesh network of Austin, Texas (since 2003), and the smart grid in Boulder, Colorado (2008). See below.

Features

A smart grid would allow the power industry to observe and control parts of the system at higher resolution in time and space. One of the purposes of the smart grid is real time information exchange to make operation as efficient as possible. It would allow management of the grid on all time scales from high-frequency switching devices on a microsecond scale, to wind and solar output variations on a minute scale, to the future effects of the carbon emissions generated by power production on a decade scale. The smart grid represents the full suite of current and proposed responses to the challenges of electricity supply. Because of the diverse range of factors, there are numerous competing taxonomies and no agreement on a universal definition. Nevertheless, one possible categorization is given here.

Load adjustment/Load balancing

The total load connected to the power grid can vary significantly over time. Although the total load is the sum of many individual choices of the clients, the overall load is not necessarily stable or slow varying. For example, if a popular television program starts, millions of televisions will start to draw current instantly. Traditionally, to respond to a rapid increase in power consumption, faster than the start-up time of a large generator, some spare generators are put on a dissipative standby mode. A smart grid may warn all individual television sets, or another larger customer, to reduce the load temporarily (to allow time to start up a larger generator) or continuously (in the case of limited resources). Using mathematical prediction algorithms it is possible to predict how many standby generators need to be used, to reach a certain failure rate. In the traditional grid, the failure rate can only be reduced at the cost of more standby generators. In a smart grid, the load reduction by even a small portion of the clients may eliminate the problem.

Peak curtailment/leveling and time of use pricing

of electric vehicles]] To reduce demand during the high-cost peak usage periods, communications and metering technologies inform smart devices in the home and business when energy demand is high and track how much electricity is used and when it is used. It also gives utility companies the ability to reduce consumption by communicating to devices directly in order to prevent system overloads. Examples would be a utility reducing the usage of a group of electric vehicle charging stations or shifting temperature set points of air conditioners in a city. To motivate them to cut back use and perform what is called peak curtailment or peak leveling, prices of electricity are increased during high demand periods and decreased during low demand periods. It is thought that consumers and businesses will tend to consume less during high-demand periods if it is possible for consumers and consumer devices to be aware of the high price premium for using electricity at peak periods. This could mean making trade-offs such as cycling on/off air conditioners or running dishwashers at 9 p.m. instead of 5 p.m. When businesses and consumers see a direct economic benefit of using energy at off-peak times, the theory is that they will include the energy cost of operation into their consumer device and building construction decisions and hence become more energy efficient.

Demand response support

Demand response support allows generators and loads to interact in an automated fashion in real-time, coordinating demand to flatten spikes. Eliminating the fraction of demand that occurs in these spikes eliminates the cost of adding reserve generators, cuts wear and tear and extends the life of equipment, and allows users to cut their energy bills by telling low priority devices to use energy only when it is cheapest. Currently, power grid systems have varying degrees of communication within control systems for their high-value assets, such as in generating plants, transmission lines, substations, and major energy users. In general, information flows one way, from the users and the loads they control back to the utilities. The utilities attempt to meet the demand and succeed or fail to varying degrees (brownouts, rolling blackout, uncontrolled blackout). The total amount of power demanded by the users can have a very wide probability distribution which requires spare generating plants in standby mode to respond to the rapidly changing power usage. This one-way flow of information is expensive; the last 10% of generating capacity may be required as little as 1% of the time, and brownouts and outages can be costly to consumers. Demand response can be provided by commercial, residential loads, and industrial loads. For example, Alcoa's Warrick Operation is participating in MISO as a qualified Demand Response Resource, and the Trimet Aluminium uses its smelter as a short-term mega-battery. Latency of the data flow is a major concern, with some early smart meter architectures allowing actually as long as 24 hours delay in receiving the data, preventing any possible reaction by either supplying or demanding devices.

Technology

The bulk of smart grid technologies are already used in other applications such as manufacturing and telecommunications and are being adapted for use in grid operations. Integrated communications: Areas for improvement include: substation automation, demand response, distribution automation, supervisory control, and data acquisition (SCADA), energy management systems, wireless mesh networks and other technologies, power-line carrier communications, and fiber-optics. Integrated communications will allow for real-time control, information, and data exchange to optimize system reliability, asset utilization, and security. Sensing and measurement: core duties are evaluating congestion and grid stability, monitoring equipment health, energy theft prevention, and control strategies support. Technologies include advanced microprocessor meters (smart meter) and meter reading equipment, wide-area monitoring systems, (typically based on online readings by Distributed temperature sensing combined with RTTR (Real Time Thermal Rating) systems), electromagnetic signature measurement/analysis, time-of-use, and real-time pricing tools, advanced switches and cables, backscatter radio technology, and Digital protective relays. Smart meters. Phasor measurement units. Many in the power systems engineering community believe that the Northeast blackout of 2003 could have been contained to a much smaller area if a wide area phasor measurement network had been in place. Distributed power flow control: power flow control devices clamp onto existing transmission lines to control the flow of power within. Transmission lines enabled with such devices support greater use of renewable energy by providing more consistent, real-time control over how that energy is routed within the grid. This technology enables the grid to more effectively store intermittent energy from renewables for later use. Smart power generation using advanced components: smart power generation is a concept of matching electricity generation with demand using multiple identical generators which can start, stop and operate efficiently at chosen load, independently of the others, making them suitable for baseload and peaking power generation. Matching supply and demand, called load balancing, is essential for a stable and reliable supply of electricity. Short-term deviations in the balance lead to frequency variations and a prolonged mismatch results in blackouts. Operators of power transmission systems are charged with the balancing task, matching the power output of all the generators to the load of their electrical grid. The load balancing task has become much more challenging as increasingly intermittent and variable generators such as wind turbines and solar cells are added to the grid, forcing other producers to adapt their output much more frequently than has been required in the past. The first two dynamic grid stability power plants utilizing the concept have been ordered by Elering and will be built by Wärtsilä in Kiisa, Estonia (Kiisa Power Plant). Their purpose is to "provide dynamic generation capacity to meet sudden and unexpected drops in the electricity supply". They are scheduled to be ready during 2013 and 2014, and their total output will be 250 MW. Power system automation enables rapid diagnosis of and precise solutions to specific grid disruptions or outages. These technologies rely on and contribute to each of the other four key areas. Three technology categories for advanced control methods are distributed intelligent agents (control systems), analytical tools (software algorithms and high-speed computers), and operational applications (SCADA, substation automation, demand response, etc.). Using artificial intelligence programming techniques, the Fujian power grid in China created a wide area protection system that is rapidly able to accurately calculate a control strategy and execute it. The Voltage Stability Monitoring & Control (VSMC) software uses a sensitivity-based successive linear programming method to reliably determine the optimal control solution.

Economics

Market outlook

In 2009, the U.S. smart grid industry was valued at about $21.4 billion—by 2014, it will exceed at least $42.8B. Given the success of the smart grids in the U.S., the world market is expected to grow at a faster rate, surging from $69.3B in 2009 to $171.4B by 2014. With the segments set to benefit the most will be smart metering hardware sellers and makers of software used to transmit and organize the massive amount of data collected by meters. A 2011 study from the Electric Power Research Institute concludes that investment in a U.S. smart grid will cost up to $476B over 20 years but will provide up to $2 trillion in customer benefits over that time. In 2015, the World Economic Forum reported a transformational investment of more than $7.6T by members of the OECD is needed over the next 25 years (or $300B per year) to modernize, expand, and decentralize the electricity infrastructure with technical innovation as key to the transformation. A 2019 study from International Energy Agency estimates that the current (depreciated) value of the U.S. electric grid is more than $1T. The total cost of replacing it with a smart grid is estimated to be more than $4T. If smart grids are deployed fully across the U.S., the country expects to save $130B annually.

General economics developments

As customers can choose their electricity suppliers, depending on their different tariff methods, the focus of transportation costs will be increased. Reduction of maintenance and replacements costs will stimulate more advanced control. A smart grid precisely limits electrical power down to the residential level, network small-scale distributed energy generation and storage devices, communicate information on operating status and needs, collect information on prices and grid conditions, and move the grid beyond central control to a collaborative network.

United States and United Kingdom savings estimates and concerns

A 2003 U.S. DOE study calculated that internal modernization of U.S. grids with smart grid capabilities would save between $46B and $117B over the next 20 years if implemented within a few years of the study. As well as these industrial modernization benefits, smart grid features could expand energy efficiency beyond the grid into the home by coordinating low priority home devices such as water heaters so that their use of power takes advantage of the most desirable energy sources. Smart grids can also coordinate the production of power from large numbers of small power producers such as owners of rooftop solar panels—an arrangement that would otherwise prove problematic for power systems operators at local utilities. One important question is whether consumers will act in response to market signals. The U.S. DOE as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Smart Grid Investment Grant and Demonstrations Program funded special consumer behavior studies to examine the acceptance, retention, and response of consumers subscribed to time-based utility rate programs that involve advanced metering infrastructure and customer systems such as in-home displays and programmable communicating thermostats. Another concern is that the cost of telecommunications to fully support smart grids may be prohibitive. A less expensive communication mechanism is proposed using a form of "dynamic demand management" where devices shave peaks by shifting their loads in reaction to grid frequency. Grid frequency could be used to communicate load information without the need of an additional telecommunication network, but it would not support economic bargaining or quantification of contributions. Although there are specific and proven smart grid technologies in use, smart grid is an aggregate term for a set of related technologies on which a specification is generally agreed, rather than a name for a specific technology. Some of the benefits of such a modernized electricity network include the ability to reduce power consumption at the consumer side during peak hours, called demand side management; enabling grid connection of distributed generation power (with photovoltaic arrays, small wind turbines, micro hydro, or even combined heat power generators in buildings); incorporating grid energy storage for distributed generation load balancing; and eliminating or containing failures such as widespread power grid cascading failures. The increased efficiency and reliability of the smart grid is expected to save consumers money and help reduce emissions.

Oppositions and concerns

Most opposition and concerns have centered on smart meters and the items (such as remote control, remote disconnect, and variable rate pricing) enabled by them. Where opposition to smart meters is encountered, they are often marketed as "smart grid" which connects smart grid to smart meters in the eyes of opponents. Specific points of opposition or concern include: consumer concerns over privacy, e.g., use of usage data by law enforcement social concerns over "fair" availability of electricity concern that complex rate systems (e.g., variable rates) remove clarity and accountability, allowing the supplier to take advantage of the customer concern over remotely controllable "kill switch" incorporated into most smart meters social concerns over Enron style abuses of information leverage concerns over giving the government mechanisms to control the use of all power using activities concerns over RF emissions from smart meters

Security

While modernization of electrical grids into smart grids allows for optimization of everyday processes, a smart grid, being online, can be vulnerable to cyberattacks. Transformers which increase the voltage of electricity created at power plants for long-distance travel, transmission lines themselves, and distribution lines which deliver the electricity to its consumers are particularly susceptible. These systems rely on sensors which gather information from the field and then deliver it to control centers, where algorithms automate analysis and decision-making processes. These decisions are sent back to the field, where existing equipment execute them. Hackers have the potential to disrupt these automated control systems, severing the channels which allow generated electricity to be utilized. This is called a denial of service or DoS attack. They can also launch integrity attacks which corrupt information being transmitted along the system as well as desynchronization attacks which affect when such information is delivered to the appropriate location. Additionally, intruders can gain access via renewable energy generation systems and smart meters connected to the grid, taking advantage of more specialized weaknesses or ones whose security has not been prioritized. Because a smart grid has a large number of access points, like smart meters, defending all of its weak points can prove difficult. Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) have evolved to target smart grids by reprogramming Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) to display false 'normal' operating conditions to operators while causing physical damage. To counter these vulnerabilities, experts recommend shifting from traditional network segmentation to 'micro-segmentation' and adopting 'zero-trust' models that require verification at every layer of the infrastructure. There is also concern on the security of the infrastructure, primarily that involving communications technology. Concerns chiefly center around the communications technology at the heart of the smart grid. Designed to allow real-time contact between utilities and meters in customers' homes and businesses, there is a risk that these capabilities could be exploited for criminal or even terrorist actions. One of the key capabilities of this connectivity is the ability to remotely switch off power supplies, enabling utilities to quickly and easily cease or modify supplies to customers who default on payment. This is undoubtedly a massive boon for energy providers, but also raises some significant security issues. Cybercriminals have infiltrated the U.S. electric grid before on numerous occasions. Aside from computer infiltration, there are also concerns that computer malware like Stuxnet, which targeted SCADA systems which are widely used in industry, could be used to attack a smart grid network. Electricity theft is a concern in the U.S. where the smart meters being deployed use RF technology to communicate with the electricity transmission network. People with knowledge of electronics can devise interference devices to cause the smart meter to report lower than actual usage. Similarly, the same technology can be employed to make it appear that the energy the consumer is using is being used by another customer, increasing their bill. The damage from a well-executed, sizable cyberattack could be extensive and long-lasting. One incapacitated substation could take from nine days to over a year to repair, depending on the nature of the attack. It can also cause an hours-long outage in a small radius. It could have an immediate effect on transportation infrastructure, as traffic lights and other routing mechanisms as well as ventilation equipment for underground roadways is reliant on electricity. Additionally, infrastructure which relies on the electric grid, including wastewater treatment facilities, the IT sector, and communications systems could be impacted. The December 2015 Ukraine power grid cyberattack, the first recorded of its kind, disrupted services to nearly a quarter of a million people by bringing substations offline. The Council on Foreign Relations has noted that states are most likely to be the perpetrators of such an attack as they have access to the resources to carry one out despite the high level of difficulty of doing so. Cyber intrusions can be used as portions of a larger offensive, military or otherwise. Some security experts warn that this type of event is easily scalable to grids elsewhere. Insurance company Lloyd's of London has already modeled the outcome of a cyberattack on the Eastern Interconnection, which has the potential to impact 15 states, put 93M people in the dark, and cost the country's economy anywhere from $243B to $1T in various damages. According to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management, the electric grid has already seen a sizable number of cyber intrusions, with two in every five aiming to incapacitate it. As such, the U.S. DOE has prioritized research and development to decrease the electric grid's vulnerability to cyberattacks, citing them as an "imminent danger" in its 2017 Quadrennial Energy Review. The DOE has also identified both attack resistance and self-healing as major keys to ensuring that today's smart grid is future-proof. While there are regulations already in place, namely the Critical Infrastructure Protection Standards introduced by the North America Electric Reliability Council, a significant number of them are suggestions rather than mandates. Most electricity generation, transmission, and distribution facilities and equipment are owned by private stakeholders, further complicating the task of assessing adherence to such standards. Additionally, even if utilities want to fully comply, they may find that it is too expensive to do so. Some experts argue that the first step to increasing the cyber defenses of the smart electric grid is completing a comprehensive risk analysis of existing infrastructure, including research of software, hardware, and communication processes. Additionally, as intrusions themselves can provide valuable information, it could be useful to analyze system logs and other records of their nature and timing. Common weaknesses already identified using such methods by the Department of Homeland Security include poor code quality, improper authentication, and weak firewall rules. Once this step is completed, some suggest that it makes sense to then complete an analysis of the potential consequences of the aforementioned failures or shortcomings. This includes both immediate consequences as well as second- and third-order cascading effects on parallel systems. Finally, risk mitigation solutions, which may include simple remediation of infrastructure inadequacies or novel strategies, can be deployed to address the situation. Some such measures include recoding of control system algorithms to make them more able to resist and recover from cyberattacks or preventive techniques that allow more efficient detection of unusual or unauthorized changes to data. Strategies to account for human error which can compromise systems include educating those who work in the field to be wary of strange USB drives, which can introduce malware if inserted, even if just to check their contents. Other solutions include utilizing transmission substations, constrained SCADA networks, policy based data sharing, and attestation for constrained smart meters. Transmission substations utilize one-time signature authentication technologies and one-way hash chain constructs. These constraints have since been remedied with the creation of a fast-signing and verification technology and buffering-free data processing. A similar solution has been constructed for constrained SCADA networks. This involves applying a Hash-Based Message Authentication Code to byte streams, converting the random-error detection available on legacy systems to a mechanism that guarantees data authenticity. Policy-based data sharing utilizes GPS-clock-synchronized-fine-grain power grid measurements to provide increased grid stability and reliability. It does this through synchro-phasor requirements that are gathered by PMUs. Attestation for constrained smart meters faces a slightly different challenge, however. One of the biggest issues with attestation for constrained smart meters is that in order to prevent energy theft, and similar attacks, cyber security providers have to make sure that the devices' software is authentic. To combat this problem, an architecture for constrained smart networks has been created and implemented at a low level in the embedded system. The protection system of a smart grid provides grid reliability analysis, failure protection, and security and privacy protection services. While the additional communication infrastructure of a smart grid provides additional protective and security mechanisms, it also presents a risk of external attack and internal failures. In a report on cyber security of smart grid technology first produced in 2010, and later updated in 2014, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology pointed out that the ability to collect more data about energy use from customer smart meters also raises major privacy concerns, since the information stored at the meter, which is potentially vulnerable to data breaches, can be mined for personal details about customers.

Other challenges to adoption

Before a utility installs an advanced metering system, or any type of smart system, it must make a business case for the investment. Some components, like the power system stabilizers (PSS) installed on generators are very expensive, require complex integration in the grid's control system, are needed only during emergencies, and are only effective if other suppliers on the network have them. Without any incentive to install them, power suppliers don't. Most utilities find it difficult to justify installing a communications infrastructure for a single application (e.g., meter reading). Because of this, a utility must typically identify several applications that will use the same communications infrastructure—for example, reading a meter, monitoring power quality, remote connection and disconnection of customers, enabling demand response, etc. Ideally, the communications infrastructure will not only support near-term applications, but unanticipated applications that will arise in the future. Regulatory or legislative actions can also drive utilities to implement pieces of a smart grid puzzle. Each utility has a unique set of business, regulatory, and legislative drivers that guide its investments. This means that each utility will take a different path to creating their smart grid and that different utilities will create smart grids at different adoption rates. Some features of smart grids draw opposition from industries that currently are, or hope to provide similar services. An example is competition with cable and DSL Internet providers from broadband over powerline internet access. Providers of SCADA control systems for grids have intentionally designed proprietary hardware, protocols and software so that they cannot inter-operate with other systems in order to tie its customers to the vendor. The incorporation of digital communications and computer infrastructure with the grid's existing physical infrastructure poses challenges and inherent vulnerabilities. According to IEEE Security & Privacy, the smart grid will require that people develop and use large computer and communication infrastructure that supports a greater degree of situational awareness and that allows for more specific command and control operations. This process is necessary to support major systems such as demand-response wide-area measurement and control, storage and transportation of electricity, and the automation of electric distribution.

Power Theft / Power Loss

Various "smart grid" systems have dual functions. This includes Advanced Metering Infrastructure systems which, when used with various software can be used to detect power theft and by process of elimination, detect where equipment failures have taken place. These are in addition to their primary functions of eliminating the need for human meter reading and measuring the time-of-use of electricity. The worldwide power loss including theft is estimated at $200B annually. Electricity theft also represents a major challenge when providing reliable electrical service in developing countries.

Deployments and attempted deployments

OpenADR Implementations

Certain deployments utilize the OpenADR standard for load shedding and demand reduction during higher demand periods.

China

The smart grid market in China is estimated to be $22.3B with a projected growth to $61.4B by 2015. Honeywell is developing a demand response pilot and feasibility study for China with the State Grid Corp. of China using the OpenADR demand response standard. The State Grid Corp., the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and General Electric intend to work together to develop standards for China's smart grid rollout.

United States

In 2009, the U.S. DOE awarded an $11M grant to Southern California Edison and Honeywell for a demand response program that automatically turns down energy use during peak hours for participating industrial customers. The DOE awarded an $11.4M grant to Honeywell to implement the program using the OpenADR standard. Hawaiian Electric Co. (HECO) is implementing a two-year pilot project to test the ability of an ADR program to respond to the intermittence of wind power. Hawaii has a goal to obtain 70% of its power from renewable sources by 2030. HECO will give customers incentives for reducing power consumption within 10 minutes of a notice.

Guidelines, standards and user groups

Part of the IEEE Smart Grid Initiative, IEEE 2030.2 represents an extension of the work aimed at utility storage systems for transmission and distribution networks. The IEEE P2030 group expects to deliver early 2011 an overarching set of guidelines on smart grid interfaces. The new guidelines will cover areas including batteries and supercapacitors as well as flywheels. The group has also spun out a 2030.1 effort drafting guidelines for integrating electric vehicles into the smart grid. IEC TC 57 has created a family of international standards that can be used as part of the smart grid. These standards include IEC 61850 which is an architecture for substation automation, and IEC 61970/61968—the Common Information Model (CIM). The CIM provides for common semantics to be used for turning data into information. OpenADR is an open-source smart grid communications standard used for demand response applications. It is typically used to send information and signals to cause electrical power-using devices to be turned off during periods of higher demand. MultiSpeak has created a specification that supports distribution functionality of the smart grid. MultiSpeak has a robust set of integration definitions that supports nearly all of the software interfaces necessary for a distribution utility or for the distribution portion of a vertically integrated utility. MultiSpeak integration is defined using extensible markup language (XML) and web services. The IEEE has created a standard to support synchrophasors—C37.118. The UCA International User Group discusses and supports real world experience of the standards used in smart grids. A utility task group within LonMark International deals with smart grid related issues. There is a growing trend toward the use of TCP/IP technology as a common communication platform for smart meter applications, so that utilities can deploy multiple communication systems, while using IP technology as a common management platform. IEEE P2030 is an IEEE project developing a "Draft Guide for Smart Grid Interoperability of Energy Technology and Information Technology Operation with the Electric Power System (EPS), and End-Use Applications and Loads". NIST has included ITU-T G.hn as one of the "Standards Identified for Implementation" for the Smart Grid "for which it believed there was strong stakeholder consensus". G.hn is standard for high-speed communications over power lines, phone lines and coaxial cables. OASIS EnergyInterop'—An OASIS technical committee developing XML standards for energy interoperation. Its starting point is the California OpenADR standard. Under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), NIST is charged with overseeing the identification and selection of hundreds of standards that will be required to implement the Smart Grid in the U.S. These standards will be referred by NIST to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). This work has begun, and the first standards have already been selected for inclusion in NIST's Smart Grid catalog. However, some commentators have suggested that the benefits that could be realized from Smart Grid standardization could be threatened by a growing number of patents that cover Smart Grid architecture and technologies. If patents that cover standardized Smart Grid elements are not revealed until technology is broadly distributed throughout the network ("locked-in"), significant disruption could occur when patent holders seek to collect unanticipated rents from large segments of the market.

References

External links

Smart Grids (European Commission) Smart Microgrids by Project Regeneration Emerging Smart Multi-Use Grids Multiple use scalable wireless network of networks Wiley: Smart Grid Applications, Communications, and Security Smart High Voltage Substation Based on IEC 61850 Process Bus and IEEE 1588 Time Synchronization Energy To Smart Grid (E2SG), one of the major European Smart Grid research projects Smart Hubs SLES : Smart Grid project part-funded by UK Research and Innovation

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