Zoya Pourmirza

Monitoring and visualising a neighbourhood area sub-grid

In this paper we analyse the architecture and technologies for monitoring the Neighbourhood Area Network (NAN) of the Smart Grid. We consider the role of sensor networks in providing information about the environment of the NAN, for example to monitor temperature and movement of vehicles and people, which can provide useful information about changes in the loading of the NAN. The two main contributions of this research are as follows. Firstly, we develop a software architecture for an ICT network of the Smart Grid which could integrate information from sensors from various levels of the grid. Currently no such architecture has been implemented for collecting data and providing the basis of Decision Support Tools (DSTs) for the NAN level of the grid. Secondly, we have developed a visualisation interface for the human operator of the grid, as the basis for such DSTs, which overlays the information from the sensors and the measurements of the electrical performance of the NAN on a GIS-based view of the NAN. We describe an actual implementation of this design currently being installed in the sub-Grid supplying the University of Manchester which is of comparable size and complexity to urban NANs.

Data Reduction for an ICT Network in the Smart Grid

Intelligent electrical networks called Smart Grids incorporate information and communication technology (ICT) to service the power grid. In this paper we discuss about our proposed ICT architecture at the level of the electrical network where monitoring and control has not previously been deployed. We describe an actual project that is being implemented on the medium voltage power network of the University of Manchester, that will offer more intelligence to the current grid. Energy constraints are one of the major limitations of the ICT in the Smart Grid, especially where wireless networking is proposed. The main contribution of this paper is that we propose a data reduction algorithm suitable for Smart Grid applications which significantly improves the energy efficiency of the communication network by minimizing the communication energy cost and optimizing the network resource consumption while maintaining the integrity and quality of data.

A Realistic ICT Network Design and Implementation in the Neighbourhood Area of the Smart Grid

The Smart Grid has three main characteristics, which are to some degree antagonistic. These characteristics are: provision of good power quality, energy cost reduction and improvement in the reliability of the grid. The need to ensure that they can be accomplished together demands a much richer ICT monitoring and control network than the current system. In this paper we particularly investigate the design and deployment of the ICT system in the urban environment, specifically in a university campus that is embedded in a city, thus it represents the Neighbourhood Area Network (NAN) level of the Smart Grid. In order to design an ICT infrastructure, we have introduced two related architectures: namely communications network architecture and a software architecture. Having access to the characteristics of a real NAN guides us to choose appropriate communication technologies and identify the actual requirements of the system. To implement these architectures at this level we need to gather and process information from environmental sensors (monitoring e.g. temperature, movement of people and vehicles) that can provide useful information about changes in the loading of the NAN, with information from instrumentation of the Power Grid itself. Energy constraints are one of the major limitations of the communication network in the Smart Grid, especially where wireless networking is proposed. Thus we analyse the most energy efficient method of collecting and sending data. The main contribution of this research is that we propose and implement an energy efficient ICT network and describe our software architecture at the NAN level, currently very underdeveloped. We also discuss our experimental results. To our knowledge, no such architectures have yet been implemented for collecting data which can provide the basis of Decision Support Tools (DSTs).

AN EXPERIMENTAL COMMUNICATION ARCHITECTURE FOR MONITORING AND CONTROL OF SUB-GRIDS

The Smart Grid promises to provide better monitoring and control by incorporating the communication network over the power network. We investigate the monitoring and control of distribution sub-Grids, for example to a local area in a city. We propose a communication architecture to be deployed into a real local area of the sub-Grid to provide a test bed for supporting real-time data and predictive real-time system control. This is one of the main challenges of the Smart Grid. Our system design is aimed at investigating two key issues: firstly, energy constraints in wireless sensor networks and secondly, achieving an appropriate balance between central and distributed control of the sub-Grid. We propose an energy efficient distributed architecture, for control and communication and explain how it will be implemented in our experimental test bed. Also, TinyDB, which is a query processing system for sensor networks, has been extended to collect the real-time data from the environment, and make them accessible by the local control unit. Finally, a visualization tool has been developed to integrate the map view of the test bed, display the real-time data, and send an alert to the network operator for finer-grained control over the system.