List Of Figures

Title Page No
Figure.1 Circuit Breaker with Sensors 7

Figure 2 Sub Station Bus-Bus Pair 9

Figure 3 Incoming Device To System 10

Figure 4 Interconnected Power Plants & Load Sub-Station 11

Figure 5. Emergency Imposed On System 12

CHAPTER-1
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 WHAT IS A SMART GRID?
A smart grid [1] delivers electricity from suppliers to consumers using two-way digital
technology to control appliances at consumers' homes to save energy, reduce cost and
increase reliability and transparency.

It is capable of assessing its health in real-time, predicting its behavior, anticipatory

behavior, adaptation to new environments, handling distributed resources, stochastic
demand, and optimal response to the smart appliances. It is a tool that allows electric
utilities to focus on evolving true business drivers by enabling cost containment, end-to-
end power delivery control, and a more secure infrastructure.

The grid is considered to have observability with nodes data integration and analysis to
support advances in system operation and control. This includes power delivery
integration and high level utility strategic planning functions.

The existing transmission and distribution systems use techniques and strategies that are
old and there is limited use of digital communication and control technology. To achieve
improved, reliable and economical power delivery information flow and secure integrated
communication is proposed.

The Smart Grid with intelligent functions is expected to provide self-correction,

reconfiguration and restoration, and able to handle randomness of loads and market
participants in real time, while creating more complex interaction behavior with
intelligent devices,

communication protocols, standard and smart algorithms to achieve complex interaction

with smart communication and transportation systems.

The Smart Grid is planned to have the following key characteristics:

1 Self-healing: A grid, which is able to rapidly detect, analyze, respond and restore from
perturbations.

2 Empower and incorporate the consumer: The ability to incorporate consumer

equipment and behavior in the design and operation of the grid.

3 Tolerant of attack: A grid that mitigates and stands resilient to physical and cyber
security attacks.

4 Provides power quality needed by 21st century users: A grid that provides a quality
of power consistent with consumer and industry needs.

5 Accommodates a wide variety of generation options: A grid that accommodates a

wide variety of local and regional generation technologies (including green power).

6 Fully enables maturing electricity markets: Allows competitive markets for those
who want them.

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7 Optimizes assets: A grid that uses IT and monitoring to continually optimize its capital
assets while minimizing operations and maintenance costs.

Overall, the Smart Grid design goals are to provide grid observability; create
controllability of assets, enhance power system performance and security; and reduce
costs of operations, maintenance, and system planning. Benefits of the Smart Grid with
bring forth the following:

● Improved system performance meters.

● Better customer satisfaction.
● Improved ability to supply information for rate cases, visibility of utility operation /
asset management
● Availability of data for strategic planning, as well as better support for digital summary
● More reliable and economic delivery of power enhanced by information flow and
secure Communication
● Life cycle management, cost containment, and end-to-end power delivery is improved
in the smart grid design
● Improved ability to supply accurate information for rate cases- with compounding
impact in regulatory utilities
● Input visibility of utility operation to asset management
● Impact access to historical data for strategic planning

1.1 FUNCTIONS SUPPORTED BY THE SMART GRID

ARCHITECTURE
For the functional scope of the Smart Grid architecture [2], eight functional scenarios
have been defined. A short description of each case is provided in the following
subsections.

1.1.1 Variable-Tariff-Based Load

The key idea of this is a variable price profile given to the customer day ahead before the
delivery by a retailer. This profile is considered fixed after transmission to the customer
and, as such, the customer can rely on it. The price profile will look different for each
day, reflecting market conditions that vary from day to day. These variations will likely
further increase with expanding generation from fluctuating sources like wind power and
photovoltaic. Generally, this concept allows for integration of loads as well as of
generation units at the customer site as it is up to the customer which devices are allowed
to be managed according to the variable tariff. To enable in-home energy management, a
suitable domestic system is required together with an automatic home management
device coupled to an intelligent meter.

1.1.2 Energy Usage Monitoring and Feedback

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In the ³Action Plan for Energy Efficiency´, the European Commission estimates the EU-
wide energy saving potential of households at approx. 27%. As one important measure
for realizing this potential, the action plan states that awareness must be increased in
order to stimulate end-customer behavioural changes. A timely display of energy
consumption is expected to have positive effects on energy savings. Personalized and
well targeted advice on how to save energy can further help exploit the savings potential.
A portal or display that combines information about present and past consumption,
comparisons to average consumption patterns, and precise suggestions how to further
lower consumption, which are tailored personally to the customer, is expected to be the
most effective way of realizing the targeted increase in households¶ energy efficiency.

1.1.3 Real-time Portfolio Imbalance Reduction

This function is rooted in the balancing mechanism as used by Transmission System

Operators (TSOs) throughout the world. In this context, a wholesale-market participant,
that is responsible for a balanced energy volume position, is called a Balance Responsible
Party

(BRP). These parties have an obligation to plan or forecast the production and
consumption in their portfolio, as well as notify this plan to the TSO. Deviations of these
plans may cause (upward or down-ward) regulation actions by the TSO. The TSO settles
the costs for the used reserve and emergency capacity with those BRPs that had
deviations from their energy programs. On average this results in costs for the BRP
referred to as imbalance costs. This business case scenario focuses on the balancing
actions by a BRP in the near-real time (i.e. at the actual moment of delivery).
Traditionally, these real-time balancing actions are performed by power plants within the
BRP¶s portfolio. The key idea of this function is the utilization of real-time flexibility of
end-user customers to balance the BRP portfolio.

1.1.4 Offering (secondary) Reserve Capacity to the TSO

Taking the previous function one step further, the BRP uses these VPPs to,
additionally,bid actively into the reserve capacity markets.

1.1.5 Distribution System Congestion Management

This function is aimed at the deferral of grid reinforcements and enhancement of network
utilization to improve the quality of supply in areas with restricted capacity in lines and
transformers. The Distribution System Operator (DSO) avoids infrastructural investments
and optimizes the use of existing assets by active management using services delivered by
smart houses. By coordinated use of these services, end-customer loads can be shifted
away from periods at which congestion occurs and simultaneousness of local supply and
demand can be improved.

1.1.6 Distribution Grid Cell Islanding in Case of Higher- System Instability

The main principle of this is to allow the operation of a grid cell in island mode in case of
higher system instability in a market environment. The scenario has two main steps, the

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first occurring before a possible instability and involves keeping a load shedding schedule
up-to-date. The second step is the steady islanded operation. The transition to the island
mode is automatic and neither end users nor the aggregator interferes with it. The system
manages the energy within the island grid and it is considered that all nodes within the
islanded grid will participate in the system.

1.1.7 Black-Start Support from Smart Houses

The most important concept of this function is to support the black start operation of the
main grid. It is assumed that after the blackout the local grid is also out of operation. The
main goal is to start up quickly in island mode and then to reconnect with the upstream
network in order to provide energy to the system.

1.1.8 Integration of Forecasting Techniques

The volatility of the production level of distributed generators, like renewables and CHP,
makes forecasting a necessary tool for market participation. The market actor with the
lowest forecasting error will have the most efficient market participation. Moreover, the
usage of intelligent management tools for handling the information about the
uncertainties of large-scale wind generation will improve the system-wide operational
costs, fuel and CO2 savings. The Smart Grid architecture under development must
interact with these forecasting tools and additionally ensure accurate data collection for
these tools

CHAPTER-2

A TRANSMISSION VIEW

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Power Grids today face many challenges that they were not designed and engineered to
handle. Congestion and a typical power flows threaten to overwhelm the system while
demand increases for higher reliability and better security and protection. The potential
ramifications of grid failures have never been greater as transport, communications,
finance, and other critical infrastructures depend on secure, reliable electricity supplies
for energy and control. Because modern infrastructure systems are so highly
interconnected, a change in conditions at any one location can have immediate impacts
over a wide area, and the effect of a local disturbance even can be magnified as it
propagates through a network. Large-scale cascade failures can occur almost
instantaneously and with consequences in remote regions or seemingly unrelated
businesses.

On the North American power grid, for example, transmission lines link all electricity
generation and distribution on the continent. Wide-area outages in the late 1990s and
summer 2003 underscore the grid¶s vulnerability to cascading effects.

Practical methods, tools, and technologies based on advances in the fields of

computation,control, and communications are allowing power grids and other
infrastructures to locally self- regulate, including automatic reconfiguration in the event
of failures, threats, or disturbances. It is important to note that the key elements and
principles of operation for interconnected power systems were established before the
1960s, before the emergence of extensive computer and communication networks.
Computation is now heavily used in all levels of the power network: for planning and
optimization, fast local control of equipment, and processing of field data. But
coordination across the network happens on a slower timescale. Some coordination
occurs under computer control, but much of it is still based on telephone calls between
system operators at the utility control centers, even²or especially²during emergencies

2.1 HOW TO MAKE AN ELECTRIC POWER TRANSMISSION

SYSTEM SMART[3]
Power transmission systems also suffer from the fact that intelligence is only applied
locally by protection systems and by central control through the supervisory control and
data acquisition (SCADA) system. In some cases, the central control system is too slow,
and the protection systems (by design) are limited to protection of specific components
only.

To add intelligence to an electric power transmission system, we need to have

independent processors in each component and at each substation and power plant. These
processors must have a robust operating system and be able to act as independent agents
that can communicate and cooperate with others, forming a large distributed computing
platform. Each agent must be connected to sensors associated with its own component or
its own substation so that it can assess its own operating conditions and report them to its
neighboring agents via the communications paths. Thus, for example, a processor
associated with a circuit breaker would have the ability to communicate with sensors built
into the breaker and communicate those sensor values using high-bandwidth fiber

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communications connected to other such processor agents. We shall use a circuit breaker
as an example. We will assume that the circuit breaker has a processor built into it with
connections to sensors within the circuit breaker (Figure1).

Figure.1 Circuit Breaker with Sensors

We also provide communication ports for the processor where the communication paths
follow the electrical connection paths. This processor agent now forms the backbone of
the smart grid as will be discussed later. We propose a system that acts very fast
(although not always as fast as the protections system), and like the protection system, its
agents act independently while communicating with each other. As such, the smart grid is
not responsible for removing faulted components, which is still the job of the protection
system, but acts to protect the system in times of emergencies in a much faster and more
intelligent manner than the central control system.

2.1.1 The Advantages of an Intelligent Processor in Each Component, Substation,

and Power Plant

We presently have two kinds of intelligent systems used to protect and operate
transmission systems: the protection systems and the SCADA/EMS/independent system
operator (ISO) systems.

Modern computer and communications technologies now allow us to think beyond

existing protection systems and the central control systems to a fully distributed system
that places intelligent devices at each component, substation, and power plant. This
distributed system will enable us to build a truly smart grid. The advantage of this
becomes apparent when we see that each component’s processor agent has inputs from
sensors in the component, thus allowing the agent to be aware of its own state and to
communicate it to the other agents within the substation. On a system level, each agent in
a substation or power plant knows its own state and can communicate with its
neighboring agents in other parts of the power system. Having such independent agents,
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which know about their own component or substation states through sensor connections,
allows the agents to take command of various functions that are not performed by either
the protection systems or the central control systems

2.1.2 Power Systems Components as Plug-and-Play Interconnects

One of the problems common to the management of central control facilities is the fact
that any equipment changes to a substation or power plant must be described and entered
manually into the central computer system¶s database and electrical one-line diagrams.
Often, this work is done some time after the equipment is installed, resulting in a
permanent set of incorrect data and diagrams in use by the operators. What is needed is
the ability to have this information entered automatically when the component is
connected to the substation² much as a computer operating system automatically updates
itself when a new disk drive or other device is connected.

When a new device is added to a substation, the new device automatically reports data
such as device parameters and device interconnects to the central control computers.
Therefore, the central control computers get updated data as soon as the component is
connected; they do not have to wait until the database is updated by central control
personnel.

Figure 2 shows a substation bus-bar pair connected by a set of disconnect switches and a
circuit breaker (the component processors are shown in orange).

Figure 2 Sub Station Bus-Bus Pair

Each processor has communication paths connecting it with processors of the substation
component in the same pattern as the electrical connections in the substation When a new

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component is added to the substation it also has a built-in processor. When the new
device is connected, the communication path (Figure 3) is connected to the processor of
the device it connects to electrically. When the new component¶s processor and
communication path are activated, it can report its parameters and interconnects to the
central control system, which can use the information to update its own database

Figure 3 Incoming Device To System

2.1.3 Diagnostic Monitoring of all Transmission Equipment

Placing the processing of sensor data in a local agent avoids the problem of sending that
data to the central computer via the limited-capacity SCADA communications. The
means for processing the local sensor data can be designed by the component
manufacturer, and the agent then only needs to send appropriate alarms to the central
computers. If the component is under such stress that the local agent determines it is in
danger of being damaged, it can initiate shutdown through appropriate interconnects to
the protections systems associated with the components

2.1.4 Grid Computing

Grid computing can be described as a world in which computational power is as readily

available as electric power and other utilities. According to Irving et al. in ³Plug into Grid
Computing,´

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“Grid computing could offer an inexpensive and efficient means for participants to
compete (but also cooperate) in providing reliable, cheap, and sustainable electrical
energy supply”.

In addition, potential applications for the future power systems include all aspects that
involve computation and are connected, such as monitoring and control, market entry and
participation, regulation, and planning. Grid computing holds the promise for addressing
the design, control, and protection of electric power infrastructure as a Complex Adaptive
System (CAS).

2.1.5 Self-Healing Network Using Distributed Computer Agents

A typical sequence seen in large power system blackouts follows these steps:

1) a transmission problem, such as a sudden outage of major lines, occurs

2) further outages of transmission lines due to overloads leave the system islanded

3) frequency declines in an island with a large generation load imbalance

4) generation is taken off line due to frequency error

5) the island blacks out

6) the blackout lasts a long time due to the time needed to get generation back online.

A self-healing grid can arrest this sequence. In Figure 4 we show three power plants
connected to load substations through a set of looped transmission lines. Each plant and
each substation will have its own processor (designated by a small red box in the figure).
Each plant and substation processor is now interconnected in the same manner as the
transmission system itself.

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 Figure 4 Interconnected Power Plants & Load Sub-Station

In Figure 5 we impose an emergency on the system; it has lost two transmission

connections and is broken into two electrical islands. The processors in each island
measure their own frequency and determine that there are load/generation imbalances in
each island that must be corrected to prevent being shut down. The processors would
have to determine the following:

1. the frequency in each island

2. what constitutes each island

3. what loads and

4. what power plants are connected to each island

5. what is the load versus generation balance in each island

6. what control actions can be made to restore the load/generation balance

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 Figure 5. Emergency Imposed On System

The substation and power plant processors form a distributed computer network that
operates independently of the central control system and can analyze the power system
state and take emergency control actions in a time frame that cannot be done by central
computer systems.

How to effectively sense and control a widely dispersed, globally interconnected system
is a serious technological problem. It is even more complex and difficult to control this
sort of system for optimal efficiency and maximum benefit to the consumers while still
allowing all its business components to compete fairly and freely. A similar need exists
for other infrastructures,where future advanced systems are predicated on the near-perfect
functioning of today’s electricity, communications, transportation, and financial services

In the coming decades, electricity¶s share of total energy is expected to continue growing,
and more intelligent processes will be introduced into this network. For example,
controllers based on power electronics combined with wide-area sensing and management
systems have the potential to improve the situational awareness, precision, reliability, and
robustness of power systems. It is envisioned that the electric power grid will move from
an electromechanically controlled system to an electronically controlled network in the
next two decades

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 CHAPTER-3

SECURITY
Smart Grid security is to be taken very seriously. The smart grid requires developing and
deploying extensive computer and communication infrastructure that supports
significantly increased situational awareness and allows finer-grained command and
control. This is necessary to support major applications and systems such as demand-
response wide-area measurement and control, electricity storage and transportation, and
distribution automation.

Any complex system has vulnerabilities and challenges, and the smart grid is no
exception.Numerous challenges will arise with the integration of cyber and physical
systems, along with such factors as human behavior, commercial interests, regulatory
policy, and even political elements. Some challenges will be quite similar to those of

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traditional networks, but involving more complex interactions. The following areas need
to be considered [9]

3.1 Trust
For control systems, we define trust as our confidence that, during some specific interval,

● the appropriate user is accessing accurate data created by the right device at the
expected location at the proper time, communicated using the expected protocol

● the data hasn’t been modified

Many people view the grid’s control systems as operating in an environment of implicit
trust, which has influenced design decisions. If some participants aren¶t trustworthy, new
methods of addressing this beyond existing monitoring approaches might be required.

3.2 Communication and Device Security

Traditional electric-grid communications have relied predominantly on serial
communication environments to provide monitoring and control.

Serial communication is reliable, is predictable, and, owing to the nature of the

communications protocols, provides some containment. However, increasing numbers of
smart-grid deployments are using Internet technologies, broadband communication, and
nondeterministic communication environments. This issue is compounded by the rapid
deployment of smart-grid systems without adequate security and reliability planning. For
example, whereas traditionally communications involved devices that were in areas with
physical access controls (such as fences and locked buildings), two-way meters being
deployed now are accessible by consumers and adversaries. Consequently, we must
consider automatic meter reading (AMR) environments hostile in such cases.

Smart meters are extremely attractive targets for malicious hackers, largely because
vulnerabilities can easily be monetized. Hackers who compromise a meter can
immediately manipulate their energy costs or fabricate generated energy meter readings.
This kind of immediacy of return on the hacker investment has proven to be a great
motivator in the past.

3.3 Privacy
As the grid incorporates smart metering and load management, user and corporate privacy
is increasingly becoming an issue. Electricity use patterns could lead to disclosure of not
only how much energy customers use but also when they¶re at home, at work, or
traveling. When at home, it might even be possible to deduce information about specific
activities (for example, sleeping versus watching television). It might also be possible to
discover what types of appliances and devices are present by compromising either the
customer¶s home area network or the AMR network. Also, increases in power draw
might suggest changes in business operations. Such energy-related information could
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support criminal targeting of homes or provide business intelligence to competitors.
Further research is needed in mitigating such threats.

3.4 Security Management Issues Complexity

The complexity and scale of future power systems that incorporate smart-grid concepts
will introduce many security challenges. Currently, a large utility communicates with
thousands of devices to manage the electrical grid. Both the volume of data and the
number of devices with which a utility communicates is likely to increase by several
orders of magnitude. With these larger networks, routine maintenance, managing trust,
and monitoring for cyber intrusion become challenges.

3.5 SOLUTION
The most effective solution for securing the Smart Grid will be based on Public Key
Infrastructure (PKI) technologies [10]. While PKI is complex, many of the items
responsible for the complexity can be significantly reduced by including the following
five main technical elements:

‡ PKI Standards

‡ Smart Grid PKI tools

‡ Device Attestation

‡ Trust Anchor Security

‡ Certificate Attributes

3.5.1 Smart Grid PKI Standards

PKI is a powerful tool that can be used to provide secure authentication and authorization
for Security Association (SA) and key establishment. They provide a mechanism for
defining naming conventions, certificate constraints, and certificate policies, but they do
not specify how these should be used. These standards rightfully leave these details to the
organizations implementing the PKI. Therefore the development of PKI standards for use
by the critical infrastructure industry is proposed.

The standards would be used to establish requirements on the PKI operations of energy
service providers (e.g. utilities, generators, etc) as well as Smart Grid device
manufacturers Standards could include such items as acceptable security policies (e.g.
PKI certificate policies used for issuing each type of certificate in the system), certificate
formats, and PKI practices.

3.5.2 Smart Grid PKI Tools

Even with the above standards, Smart Grid operators would have to familiarize
themselves with PKI concepts, terminology, risks, best practices and the above mentioned
standards. This is not likely to provide a cost-effective solution. However, given such a

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set of standards, it would be possible for vendors to develop Smart Grid PKI Tools which
are based on these standards.

Such tools would greatly ease the process of managing the PKI components needed to
support the Smart Grid application. These tools will be knowledgeable of the appropriate
Smart Grid certificate policy and certificate format standards, and will be used to
programmatically enforce compliance to those standards. Such tools will enhance
interoperability, reduce the burden of running the PKI, and ensure that appropriate
security requirements are adhered to. The tools could both automate and enforce the
appropriate requirements for each PKI operation such as vetting certificate signing
requests (CSR), or certificate revocation.

For example, the tools would know the different requirements for handling CSRs for
human system administrators. The tools would aid with system deployment, PKI
operations, and system auditing, all in accordance with the standard model policy. Most
importantly, these tools will eliminate the need for symmetric key configuration, which is
an inherently insecure and expensive process.

3.5.3 Device Attestation

An enhanced security function is device attestation. Device attestation techniques provide

a method to securely ascertain if a device has been tampered with, as well as the true
identity of a device (prior to any on-site provisioning). With device attestation techniques,
accredited manufacturers can factory-install device attestation certificates in each Smart
Grid device

These device attestation certificates are used only to assert the device manufacturer,
model, serial number, and that the device has not been tampered with. These certificates
coupled with the appropriate authentication protocol can be used by the energy service
provider to ensure that the device is exactly what it claims to be. In order to support
device attestation, the device will need a FIPS 140 hardware security module (HSM), and
will need high assurance boot (HAB) functionality.

3.5.4 Trust Anchor Security

One major component of a secure PKI enabled system is the requirement that each
relying party (RP) (any device that uses the certificate of a second party to authenticate
the second party) must have secure methods to load and store the root of trust or trust
anchor (TA). The TA is typically a Certificate Authority (CA) at the top of a CA
hierarchy. Relying Parties trust certificate holders because they trust the TA which trusts
a CA which trusts the end certificate holders.

This trust is evidenced by a chain of certificates rooted at the Trust Anchor. If an

adversary could change the root of trust for any RP, that RP could be easily
compromised. The challenge for the operator is to ensure that each secure device obtains
the correct TA information.

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One method to doing this without needing to preload the TA certificate into every device
is as follows. Each accredited manufacture will preload the device with a Manufactures
certificate identifying the make, model and serial number of the device, and a ³pre-
provisioned TA Certificate. After a Smart Grid operator purchases a Smart Grid device,
the manufacturer would issue the operator a TA Transfer Certificate, which would
instruct the device to accept the operator’s root CA certificate as the new trust anchor, and
only the operator’s root CA certificate. The TA Transfer Certificate would be constrained
to specific devices (based on serial number)

In addition to secure TA management, each PKI enabled Smart Grid device should have
the ability to securely load and store a local policy database (LPD). This local policy
database is a set of rules that define how the device can use its certificate, and what types
of certificates it should accept when acting as an RP. The LPD would be a signed object,
stored in the HSM, and signed by a Policy Signing server trusted by the TA. It would be
possible for the same PKI tools to automate the management of the LPD as the TA
certificate.

3.5.5 Certificate Attributes

In order for portions of the Smart Grid to continue to function while major portions of the
grid infrastructure are unreachable, it will be essential for Smart Grid devices to be able to
authenticate and determine the authorization status for each other (as well as human
system administrators) without the need to reach a back-end security server.

In order to do this, two additional capabilities would be required. First, Smart Grid
certificates will require policy attributes to indicate the applicability of the certificate to a
given application. Second, a local source of performing certificate status will be required.
This can be accomplished in a number of ways.

For example, it would not be difficult or costly to distribute local certificate status servers
throughout the grid. A possibly better method involves having each certificate subject
periodically obtain a signed certificate status for his own certificate. The certificate
subject would store this status and provide it to an RP when authenticating to the RP. The
RP would determine, based on local policy, if this status was new enough to accept, and if
so, the associated certificate could then be evaluated.

It would also be recommended that all certificate subjects were loaded with the chain of
certificates between themselves and their TA, and select chains of certificates between the
subject’s TA and the TAs of other agencies with which the local agency has cross-signed
or otherwise trusts. Management of theses chains of certificates, and ensuring that devices
receive the proper set, would again be automated by tools

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 CHAPTER-4

RELIABILITY
Renewable resources, while supplementing the generation capability of the grid and
addressing some environmental concerns, aggravate the reliability due to their volatility.
Demand response and electric storage resources are necessary for addressing economics
of the grid and are perceived to support grid reliability through mitigating peak demand
and load variability. Electric transportation resources are deemed helpful to meeting
environmental targets and can be used to mitigate load variability. Balancing the diversity
of the characteristics of these resource types presents challenges in maintaining grid
reliability [7].

Reliability has always been in the forefront of power grid design and operation due to the
cost of outages to customers. In the US, the annual cost of outages in 2002 is estimated to
be in the order of $79B [5] which equals to about a third of the total electricity retail
revenue of $249B [6]. A similar estimate based on 2008 retail revenue would be of the
order of $109B. Much higher estimates have been reported by others. The reliability
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issues in modern power grids are becoming increasingly more challenging. Factors
contributing to the challenges include:

● Aggravated grid congestion, driven by uncertainty, diversity and distribution of energy

supplies due to environmental and sustainability concerns. The power flow patterns in
real-time can be significantly different from those considered in the design or off-line
analyses.

● More numerous, larger transfers over longer distances increasing volatility and
reducing reliability margins.This phenomenon is aggravated by energy markets.

●The grid being operated at its ³edge´ in more locations and more often because of :

→ nsufficient investment and limited rights of way

→ Increasing energy consumption and peak demand creating contention for limited
transfer capability

→ Aging infrastructure

→ Maximizing asset utilization driven by modern tools for monitoring, analyzing and
control

● Consolidation of operating entities giving rise to a larger ³foot print´ with more
complex problems and requiring smaller error margins and shorter decision times. This
problem may be aggravated by depletion of experienced personnel due to retirement, etc.

4.1 DISTRIBUTION MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS

The reliability problem also arises due to faults occurring in the system.A set of
advanced automation functions [8] is developed to combat this problem. These new
distribution management functions can be summarized as follows:

4.1.1 The Fault Diagnosis and Alarm Processing Function:

This function is automatically triggered immediately after the occurrence of a fault. It

produces a diagnosis of events on the basis of a set of pre-defined scenarios (a
comparison of the remote information flow is made with the patterns predefined by
experienced operators). The diagnosis produces an analysis of the type of fault enabling
the operator to quickly understand what happened in the network under its control. The
function can also detect missing remote control signals.

4.1.2 The Fault Location Function:

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After detecting and analyzing the fault, it is necessary to find the location of the fault. The
goal of this function is to quickly determine the section of the feeder where the fault
occurred. This is performed by analyzing the information sent from fault indicators to the
control center. Operators can then intervene and isolate the fault area by remotely opening
the corresponding switches. The degree of accuracy depends on the density of fault
indicators on the MV network.

4.1.3 The Service Restoration Function:

After locating the fault, this function finds all the plans allowing power restoration to lost
customers of the non-faulted section of the feeder while considering technical constraints.
Each plan consists of a series of actions, (opening/closing of switching devices) leading to
power restoration.

CONCLUSION

With the increasing world population, thereby increasing demand, and depleting
resources the need to be µsmart and efficient in our energy usage has become an
imperative .Implementation of Smart Grid concept would go a long way in solving many
of the present energy issues and problems. The whole network needs to be upgraded to
meet the requirements i.e. at transmission as well as distribution level. Researches are
going on to find the optimal solution and new technology to make all the desired
characteristics possible.

Smart Meters, Smart Homes, Smart City and so on would constitute the Smart Grid. As
the new technologies would be invented and existing ones boosted up to meet the desired
specifications the Smart Grid would become a reality and change the whole energy
pattern throughout the world
ITM/PS/2009/ 09EIMPS615 Page 20
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