About the Author
Rajesh Porwal Address
Divisional engineer( telecom acceptance test)
Raipur ( Chattisgarh) 8B/20 sector 10
[email protected] Bhilai 490006
m-9425550046 Chhattisgarh state ,India
website-www.digitalstreams.in
Affiliations-Internet Society
Smart grid & Internet of things
Preface
Internet of Things (IoT) is a computing concept that can connect numerous and various physical objects to the
Internet thanks to sensors and other wireless technologies. That idea can be implemented in smart grids to increase
their performance and cooperation with smart loads, electric vehicles (EV) and renewable energy resources (RES).
The aim of this paper is to describe possible role of IoT in smart grids in a context of large amounts of data that need
to be transferred in smart grid
Traditional power grids are being transformed into Smart Grids (SGs) to address the issues in existing power system
due to uni-directional information flow, energy wastage, growing energy demand, reliability and security. SGs offer
bi-directional energy flow between service providers and consumers, involving power generation, transmission, and
distribution and utilization systems. SGs employ various devices for the monitoring, analysis and control of the grid,
deployed at power plants, distribution centers and in consumers’ premises in a very large number. Hence, an SG
requires connectivity, automation and the tracking of such devices. This is achieved with the help of Internet of
Things (IoT). IoT helps SG systems to support various network functions throughout the generation, transmission,
distribution and consumption of energy by incorporating IoT devices (such as sensors, actuators and smart meters),
as well as by providing the connectivity, automation and tracking for such devices
Introduction
A traditional power grid consists of a large number of loosely interconnected synchronous Alternate Current (AC)
grids. It performs three main functions: generation, transmission and distribution of electrical energy , in which
electric power flows only in one direction, i.e., from a service provider to the consumers. Firstly in power
generation, a large number of power plants generate electrical energy, mostly from burning carbon and uranium
based fuels. Secondly in power transmission, the electricity is transmitted from power plants to remote load centers
through high voltage transmission lines. Thirdly in power distribution, the electrical distribution systems distribute
electrical energy to the end consumers at reduced voltage. Each grid is centrally controlled and monitored to ensure
that the power plants generate electrical energy in accordance with the needs of the consumers within the constraints
of power systems. Nearly, all the generation transmission and distribution of electrical energy is owned by the utility
companies who provide electrical energy to consumers and bill them accordingly to recover their costs and earn
profit.
The power grids endure a significant wastage of energy due to a number of factors, such as consumers’ inefficient
appliances and lack of smart technology, inefficient routing and dispensation of electrical energy, unreliable
communication and monitoring, and most importantly, lack of a mechanism to store the generated electrical energy
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In order to solve these challenges, the Smart Grid (SG) paradigm has appeared as a promising solution with a variety
of information and communication technologies. Such technologies can improve the effectiveness, efficiency,
reliability security, sustainability, stability and scalability of the traditional power grid . SG differs from traditional
power grids in many aspects. For instance, SG offers a bi-directional communication flow between service providers
and consumers, while a traditional power grid only offers uni-directional communication from the service provider
to the consumer SG provides Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), smart meters, fault tolerance, unauthorize
usage detection, and load balancing , as well as self-healing, i.e., detection and recovery from faults
Background
Recently, the electricity consumption has changed in practice and in nature. The electricity uses are evolving:
positive energy buildings, electric mobility, variable intensity urban lighting, storage batteries, etc. The electricity
production modes are also evolving thanks to the development of renewable energies and the transformation of the
energy mix. The electrical system must therefore evolve towards greater reliability, efficiency and flexibility in
order to better take into account the development of new uses and to preserve the balance between consumption and
production in a changing energy landscape. Smart grids become a real solution to these concerns, by introducing
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into electricity grids and integrating efficiently the actions of
all users (producers and consumers) in order to guarantee a sustainable, safe and cost-effective supply of electricity.
Smart grids ensure efficient connection and exploitation of all means of production, provide automatic and real-time
management of the electrical networks, allow better measurement of consumption, optimize the level of reliability
and improve the existing services which in turn lead to energy savings and lower costs. The implementation of smart
grids features leads to a very large increase in the volume of data to be processed due to the installation of smart
meters and various sensors on the network and the development of customer facilities, etc. For example a smart
meter could send the consumer energy usage every 15 min, so every million meters can generate 96 million reads
per day instead of one meter reading a month in a conventional grid. So, in addition to energy management, smart
grids require great data management to be able to deal with high velocity, important storage capacity and advanced
data analytics requirements.
Indeed, smart grids data requires complex treatments, because of their nature, distribution and real-time constraints
of certain needs. Big Data techniques are suitable for advanced and efficient data management for this kind of
applications. The large volume of data will help utilities do things they never could do before such as better
understanding the customer behaviour, conservation, consumption and demand, keeping track of downtime and
power failures etc. At the same time, this will present challenges for utilities that lack the systems and data analysis
skills to deal with these data. So, the main goal of utilities now is the ability to manage high volume data and to use
advanced analytics to transform data collected to information, then to knowledge and finally to actionable plans.
What is Smart Grid?
• An electricity distribution network which uses digital communication means to detect local changes in usage of
power and react automatically without any human interactions is known as smart grid.
• It uses smart meters and appliances, renewable and efficient energy resources.
• The system delivers electricity via 2-way digital communication. It allows consumers to interact with the grid.
• The smart grid overcomes many drawbacks of traditional electrical grids and provides benefits to consumers,
electricity company and government establishments.
• It reduces energy consumption and reduces cost to the consumers by smart means. Electric supply companies make
efficient usage of energy and consecutively will be able to meet the varying load demands of the consumers.
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The above figure depicts generic Smart Grid Network Architecture components or modules with different reference
points. As shown typical smart grid network consists of following components.
• Grid domain (Operations include bulk generation, distribution, transmission)
• Smart meters
• Consumer domain (HAN (Home Area Network) consists of smart appliances and more)
• Communication network (Connects smart meters with consumers and electricity company for energy monitoring
and control operations, include various wireless technologies such as zigbee, wifi, HomePlug, cellular (GSM,
GPRS, 3G, 4G-LTE) etc.
• Third party Service providers (system vendors, operators, web companies etc.)
IoT based Smart Grid Architectures
Application of IoT in smart grids allows sharing of information between all components in the grid. In implementing
smart cities with smart grids, IoT has a crucial role to play. IoT also enables smart energy management. Strong
sensing capabilities and higher connectivity features of smart meters are exploited by IoT. The consumption patterns
can be understood in large scale environments and can be used for optimization of energy and billing. There are
several challenges in implementing these systems. The major challenge is safety and privacy. It is essential to
enforce safety in data collection, control messages, monitoring of equipment and notification transmission. Other
factors to be considered include confidentiality, integrity, availability, authentication, nonrepudiation and access
control. Several passive attacks like release of message contents and traffic analysis and active attacks like denial of
service, jamming, False Data Injection (FDI)and masquerade are to be addressed. For this purpose, firewalls and
encryption techniques are considered. Flocking-based model, warning systems, Jamming Attack Detection Based on
Estimation (JADE), Cryptographic Keys, Real-Time Detection of False Data Injection, Minimizing Message Delay
under Jamming Conditions, Aggregated Key Encryption, Intrusion Detection and such solutions are explored by
several researchers
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Architecture of smart grid based on IOT
Smart Grid Architecture Working for smart metering application
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The above figure depicts Smart Grid Architecture for smart metering application used by electricity company.
• As shown smart meters are installed at home, office and factory premises. These smart meters communicate with
DCU (Data Concentrator Unit) located on the electric pole near the residential layout. Meters can provide
parameters which include instantaneous consumptions, cumulative energy, time of day energy data, Maximum
Demand (KW) etc.
• The Data concentrator units installed in the area collects the energy usage and other parameters related to status of
meters. These collected information is transmitted to the data servers located at utility company or at third party
premise using wired or wireless means. The transport mechanism can be DSL, Fiber optic or wireless network (2G,
GPRS, 3G, 4G-LTE etc.).
• The complete smart grid network information can be updated/monitored by web site or web portal using
laptop/mobile/tablet/PC. Web portal communicates with DCUs in real time for data collection and data processing.
It reports tampering of meters, billing information, energy usage, load status etc.
Benefits or advantages of Smart Grid
Following are the benefits or advantages of Smart Grid:
➨It reduces electricity theft.
➨It reduces electricity losses (transmission, distribution etc.)
➨It reduces electricity cost, meter reading cost, T&M operations and maintenance costs etc.
➨It reduces equipment failures due to automatic operation based on varying load conditions. Demand-Response
reduces stress on assets of smart grid system during peak conditions which reduces their probability of failure.
➨It reduces sustained outages and reduces consecutively associated restoration cost.
➨It reduces air emissions of CO2, SOx, NOx and PM-2.5. Hence smart grid contributes to keep environment green.
➨It reduces oil usage and wide scale black-outs. Hence smart grid provides security to the people by providing
continuous power.
➨Smart grid is capable of meeting increased consumer demand without ading infrastructure.
Drawbacks or disadvantages of Smart Grid
Following are the drawbacks or disadvantages of Smart Grid:
➨Continuous communication network should be available.
➨During emergency situation, network congestion or performance are big challenges in smart grid system.
➨Cellular network providers do not provide guaranteed service in abnormal situations such as wind storm, heavy
rain and lightening conditions.
➨Some smart meters can be hacked which can be used to increase or decrease the demand for power.
➨It is expensive to install smart meter compare to traditional old electricity meter.
Challenges in Implementation of IoT based Smart Grids
A. Connection Stability and Communication
The system response in smart grids reallocates the surplus power to the area where there is shortage in power
locally. This improves the efficiency of the system. Similarly, it can work efficiently in several scenarios. It is
essential to establish communication between systems. For proper communication, IoT needs fast internet
connectivity. Low connectivity leads to reduction in optimality of redistribution of power. Small latency and quick
response is a major requirement for smooth communication among the components in smart grid. Collection of
scalable data is a major challenge due to the lack of tools for live analysis.
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B. Cost
It is simpler to establish a wireless network whereas, implementation of wired network involves proper planning and
installation. While implementing smart grids, power failure are intolerable. This factor may lead to increased cost of
implementation. Despite the huge implementation costs, smart grids and IoT save large amounts of energy by
rerouting power instantly on detection of power failure. Installation of smart meters is implemented in real time in
France, USA and several countries along with the connection of several devices to IoT.
In certain application of IoT in smart grid, power distribution, transmission and distribution causes severe
electromagnetic interference. To avoid this, the chips and equipment are to be made to withstand low and high
temperature variations, with anti-vibration and anti-electromagnetic capabilities, enabled with water and dust-proof
systems and new technologies so as to improve the lifetime of the module
C. Information Security
Smart grids and IoT are vulnerable to several security issues. Internet based security issues, cyber threats, resource
constraints, data privacy, trust management, authorization and authentication, data integrity, cyber-attacks,
scalability, confidentiality and identity spoofing are some of the commonly faced issues. Security tools such as deep
packet inspection and information management tools can provide security to a certain extent in IoT based smart
grids. These techniques can address specific vulnerabilities and secure data threads. Wired networks are prone to
physical damage and interruption. In case of wireless networks, despite strong encryption techniques, the data
packets tend to be seized and decrypted in certain cases.
Cameras and sensors in smart environment can capture every movement and attract cybercriminals. Hence it is
essential to create a secure environment and avoid leakage and misuse of data. Block chain and similar platforms
can be used to ensure this security. Poor design in the system may lead to vulnerabilities and bugs. It is difficult to
integrate reliable and complex security methods due to the power constraints in IoT and smart meters [6]. The most
frequent threats to information security includes remote controlling of smart meters, violation of confidentiality of
consumers, alteration of energy transaction and grid destabilization, data monitoring for falsified reasons.
Information systems
Information systems are crucial components in smart grids that communicate together for a flexible, scalable and
efficient grid. Utility information systems control and load data coming from substations of the utility field or from
electricity consumers including commercial, residential and industrial consumers, then use it to extract values about
the state of the lines and equipments, the energy consumed, the consumption modes, etc. Utility information systems
contain several components: Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system collects data from utility
field, then uses it to manage the electrical grid infrastructure. This system communicates with other information
systems to report about the network. Customer Information System (CIS), Geographic Information System (GIS),
Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and Meter Data Management System (MDMS) process the data coming
from electricity consumers, and they also exchange data between each other. Demand Response Management
System (DRMS) and Outage Management System (OMS) are the main systems in the grid because they interact
with all other systems and even together to guarantee a global vision of the grid and consumers satisfaction. More
details about each of these systems are provided below.
Supervisory control and data acquisition
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) is a reliable and safe system for monitoring control in smart
grid. This system manages and maintains electrical networks, because it has the ability to collect data from any
system in order to control it, using several devices for example sensors, SCADA master and SCADA Remote
Terminal Unit (RTU) . The mission of a SCADA system is data acquisition, data communication, data presentation
and control in order to increase automation, efficiency and reduce costs. It helps smart grid to deliver energy in
optimal way by offering a great number of opportunities such as programmable controls, multi-protocol support and
detecting network malfunction using alarms.
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Advanced metering infrastructure
The Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) allows having measurements about energy consumption and
production, which help utilities control the energy and be efficient in term of cost and time. AMI relies on smart
meters, which must meet several requirements such as the data storage capability, the duration of meter intervals etc.
AMI uses a great number of technologies to manage smart meters, such as MDMS, operational gateways and
systems for data integration into software application platforms. All these technologies ensure advanced
management systems in smart grid.
Outage management system
Utilities always seek to ensure a very high rate of user satisfaction by discovering, locating and resolving power
outages in a very efficient and short time. Outage Management Systems (OMS) are important to have a vision and
more precision about outages that can happen, in order to take corrective actions, minimize the effect, diagnose the
causes and improve the system’s availability and reliability. There is a lot of collected data that can be used for
operational improvements, which helps to manage outage and improve efficiency including customers data, mobile
workforce, field crews, SCADA and smart meters etc.
Geographic information system
The Geographic Information System (GIS) is primordial for utilities because it helps them to have visualization of
maps and points of interests, to manage spatial data and present it. This system can be considered as visualization
technology of the grid to have a global vision of consumers, generators and power lines position etc.
Customer information system
The Customer Information System (CIS) comes in order to develop the relationship between utilities and customers
using every customer interaction. CIS helps utilities to deliver their services efficiently, to automate periodic tasks
and to understand customer’s requirements and how each customer is connected to the grid.
Demand response management system
The Demand Response Management System (DRMS) gives the utilities the ability to create automated, integrated,
and flexible platforms to manage demand response solutions in an efficient and smart manner. This system brings a
great number of benefits such as reduce energy costs, improve stability and security and ensure satisfaction for
customers and regulatory requirements for demand-side.
Standards and interoperability
A smart grid is an heterogeneous and complex environment that contains different kind of devices, networks,
systems and data. As examples, there are networks with fast or low processing, devices with or without energy
constraints, interactive or non interactive systems, continuous or non continuous data, etc. So, smart grids face
different requirements and challenges to manage data integration in term of bandwidth constraints, errors, limited
resources and high scalability. If standards are not provided, utilities are dealing with different protocols with
different definitions and different communication techniques which would make interoperability impossible. To
standardize smart grids, many information models have been developed, starting by IEC 61850 used to
communicate with MDMS and related enterprise applications. IEC 61970/61968 Common Information Models
(CIM) is another information model which uses IEC 61850 as the basis of information exchanges and messaging.
Recently, the integration of smart inverters required advanced protocols, so a more developed information model has
been published as IEC 61850-90-7. There is also other advanced protocols like IEEE 1815 (dnp3) and IEEE 2030.5
(Sep2) which allow the use of existing communications infrastructure.
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Management of massive data volume
Smart grids bring to surface the cost of storing and processing the huge quantity of data used to manage the grid.
Unfortunately, utilities still don’t make full use of the new data collected because they lack the infrastructure and/or
data analysis skills to deal with it. In addition to utilities massive data management issues, there are some challenges
for customers data management. The unused data will reduce smart grid opportunities for consumers as active
participants, in term of controlling their energy consumption and avoiding peak loads through price benefits.
Customers should be aware of the huge quantity of data that can be extracted using smart grid platforms. They
should be educated about how to communicate with their meters and with the different platforms in the grid so they
can make efficient choices to conserve energy and save money.
Security and data privacy
In the smart grid ecosystem, millions of devices are inter-connected via communication networks which surrenders
the grid to potential vulnerabilities. Moreover, virtualization technologies, the key to use cloud computing
technologies, makes electrical companies able to run their applications in virtual machines, which reduce the
investment cost in terms of hardware and energy . But on the other hand, it has some limitations in security due to
the shared platform between several users. The network bandwidth is also another challenge, which causes low
latency problems in real time applications, that require highly scalable, available, and fault-tolerant connection . All
these ICT dimensions increase the risk of compromising smart grid security objectives, namely: availability,
integrity, confidentiality and accountability. The data confidentiality cannot be guaranteed if there is no secure
connectivity between devices . To secure the communication, there is a need to adopt an authentication mechanism .
The most common is the ‘authentication, authorization and accounting’ (AAA) mechanism. The authentication
defines users using credentials, the authorization describes for each user his own permissions, and the accounting is
responsible of supervising users.
Big Data for smart grid
The data collected in the smart grid through smart meters and other sensors installed is very huge. The processing of
such a huge heterogeneous data is not possible without the use of big data analytics technique. Big data analytics
and machine learning algorithms play a vital role in electricity transmission and distribution network for data
collection, storage and analysis of the data, prediction for data forecasting, and maintenance of the system. These
techniques can help to optimally deliver energy at a lower cost with high quality and can also improve the customer
service as well as social welfare.
Big Data technologies are a good opportunity for utilities to bring new methodologies, evaluation models and
applications and improve data management in smart grids
Big data analytics combined with grid visualization can lead to better situational awareness and predictive decisions.
Predictive maintenance and fault detection based on data analytics with advanced metering infrastructure is more
crucial to the security of the power system.
Moreover, at the end-user level, smart grids can enable demand flexibility and consumer participation in the energy
system, including through demand response, electric vehicle (EV) charging and self-produced distributed generation
and storage. Thus, lots of data will be generated in terms of usage and it has catalyzed the smart grid data analytics
market.
Big Data Analytics in Smart Grid Management
Smart meters are being deployed replacing conventional meters worldwide and to enable automated collection of
energy consumption data. However, the massive amounts of data evolving from smart grid meters used for
monitoring and control purposes need to be sufficiently managed to increase the efficiency, reliability and
sustainability of the smart grid the nature of smart grids can be considered as a big data challenge that requires
advanced informatics techniques and cyber-infrastructure to deal with huge amounts of data and their analytics. For
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that, this unprecedented smart grid data require an effective platform that takes the smart grid a step forward in the
big data era
In the traditional electricity system, a very small amount of data is generated, which was collected manually and
analyzed only for the utility bill. But in the smart grid (SG), due to bidirectional communication and other sensor
devices, a huge amount of data is collected automatically. This data is then analyzed to extract valuable information
not only to generate usage bills but also to know the status of the entire electricity grid. The information extracted
from SG helps to estimate the demand and supply, state of equipment, customer behavior, optimization of
electricity, etc
Data analytics done with advanced metering infrastructure is more critical for predictive maintenance and fault
detection for the security of the power system The data collected from advance metering infrastructure (AMI) is
separated into three main classes namely; measurement data, business data and external data The data collected from
AMI is processed using Big Data Analytics techniques. This analysis, in turn, helps to understand the present status
of the grid and supports various vital decisions Smart Meters, one of the important components of AMI makes
possible real time pricing schemes and helps the customers to use the energy efficiently. Once the consumers are
educated on the optimal use of energy and its benefit to them they can manage the energy usage intelligently. This
demand end management gives benefits to both customers and energy providers. The data collected from smart
meters can help the energy providers to understand the profile of the consumer, needs and behavior outcomes. This
information helps providers to take the decisions related to load management during peak hours, outage
management such as blackouts and quality of power management. The load control feature of smart meter allows
the customers to switch on /off of individual appliances as and when required
Big Data Processing Stages for smart grid data
Data has to be processed through several stages to get the desired result. The process stages of big data analytics in
the smart grid are data acquisition from various data sources data integration to combine the variety of data, data
storage in the required format, data analytics to get processed information and finally, data visualization to
understand the processed information clearly and concise
Conclusion
The ‘smart’ in smart grid refers to the additional infrastructure layer that allows for two-way communication
between consumer devices and transmission lines. This two-way communication is possible thanks to the
development of several innovations, like IoT and cloud computing.
he smart grid is a vital part of energy because it allows energy providers to draw full value from the smart grid. The
smart grid refers to the new infrastructure where there is an emphasis on connected devices. It allows for a layer of
communication between local actuators, central controllers and logistic units. This layer of communication is useful
in many different areas because it allows for better response time during an emergency, more efficient use of
resources and even improve the delivery of the network through automation. While the smart grid is all about
keeping different devices like generators and consumer-end devices connected.
The smart grid is an exciting development because it represents a massive leap forward for the energy industry. It
brings several benefits, like more efficient energy transmission, lower management costs, better security, operations
costs and better integration of renewable energy. Naturally, the smart grid generates a lot of data, and smart grid
analytics is needed to analyse the information produced. Otherwise, it would be impossible to extract any value from
the data.
Electricity as the primary source of power for gadgets, computers, machinery, and other electronic goods is used at
the home-to-industrial level. Most of the world's Electric Grids operate on fossil fuels which are getting thinner and
expected to run out soon, the best solution that is possible to do is Smart Grid. The Smart Grid realized extensive use
of information sensing, transmission and processing. Today, IoT technology become a essential role in construction
of power grid. This paper reviews the Integration of IoT in Smart Grids. IoT-integrated Smart Grid systems are
already deployed, but the full capabilities of instant knowledge and sustainable large-scale data processing have not
been exploited optimally. Two of the architectures of IoT integrated Smart Grids is four-layered architecture and
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Web Enabled Smart Grid. To process and manage the Big Data in Smart Grid, Supervisory Control and Data
Acquisition (SCADA) system can be used and furthermore enhanced with cloud computing. The smart grid is the
future of electric grid that solves the problems of information flows, rising energy consumption, energy waste,
reliability and security in the conventional power grid.
Application of IoT in smart grids allows sharing of information between all components in the grid. In implementing
smart cities with smart grids, IoT has a crucial role to play. IoT also enables smart energy management. Strong
sensing capabilities and higher connectivity features of smart meters are exploited by IoT.
The SG has been promoted as a promising solution for minimizing the wastage of electrical energy and as a means
to solve the problems of traditional power grids, making possible advances in efficiency, effectiveness, reliability,
security, stability, and increasing demand of electrical energy . The main SG attributes are that it offers self-healing,
improved electricity quality, distributed generation and demand response, mutual operation and user participation,
and effective asset management.
The smart grid combines the traditional power system with information technology leading to a one of most
important modern cyber-physical systems. Smart grid is envisioned to fully integrate high-speed and two-way
communication technologies into millions of power equipment to establish a dynamic and interactive infrastructure
with new energy management capabilities, such as advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and demand response.
Smart grid heavily relies on information and communication technology to achieve efficient and reliable operation [.
At the same time, smart grid big data has provided new opportunities for electric load forecasting, anomaly detection
(e.g power theft), and demand side-management. However, the high-dimensional and massive smart grid big data
creates new challenges in data transmission, data storage, and data analysis.
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