2010 International Conference on Power System Technology

Framework of Smart Grid

Jinshuang Hu Member of CSEE Shanghai 201114, China Abstract Distributed generation is a clean and renewable alternative to or enhancement of traditional large-scale centralized generation to improve energy efficiency and reduce CO2 greenhouse gas emissions. Smart appliances at factories or homes can be switched off at peak hours and on when power is less expensive. They act as peak curtailment and can lessen peak demand surges during the day so that less energy is wasted in order to ensure adequate reserves. All these new technologies, on both generation and demand sides, have environmental and economical benefits, but also need more complicated electricity network, the bridge in between, to connect and maintain them together. Smart grid is a major solution to modernize current electricity network to facilitate connecting distributed energy resources (DER) and smart appliances with electrical power grid. The information integration solutions (IIS) which integrates and upgrades the presently separate functionalities of EMS, DMS, OMS, and GIS, is one of the key technologies of smart grid. Smart grid will bring huge benefits to both power utility industry and customer. Key words: Distributed Generation, Smart Appliance, Smart Grid, Information Integration Solutions (IIS) I. Introduction Large-scale centralized generation and high-voltage long-distance AC/DC transmission are the two basic features of present electric power energy production. This paradigm has excellent economies of scale. It solves the bulk power energy problem of our age. Meanwhile it also has some negative factors, such as environmental damage, transmission and distribution loss, grid stability, and etc. As the scale of power grid getting larger, peoples requirement of power quality getting higher, and public consciousness of environment protection getting stronger, these issues become more and more urgent. Distributed generation is a different development idea of power system. It applies small-scale power generation technologies
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(typically in the range of 3 kW to 10,000 kW[1]) used to provide a cheap and clean alternative to or an enhancement of the conventional centralized power generation. It reduces the amount of energy lost in transmitting electricity because the electricity is generated very near where it is used, perhaps even in the same building, and also reduces the size and number of power lines that must be constructed. Because of the inherently intermittent nature of distributed generation, more advanced and complicated automation technologies should be introduced into the current electrical network, so that the updated electrical network can efficiently connect and control so many DERs to maintain the stability of the whole power system. Smart grid is a total series of concepts and solutions of these innovative technologies. In principle, smart grid is a simple upgrade of 20th century power grids which generally "broadcast" power from a few central power generators to a large number of users, to instead be capable of routing power in more optimal ways to respond to a very wide range of conditions, and to charge a premium to those that use energy at peak hours[1]. Smart grid will modernize traditional power grid to improve energy consumption efficiency, real time management of power flows, to transform urban environments for sustainability, to provide the bi-directional metering needed to compensate local producers of power, and to offer consumers more energy options. Smart grid will introduce a great deal of new technologies into today's power grid, and bring a revolutionary change to it. It will set up a model for the next generation of electricity delivery for 21st century. Once smart grid comes true, it will be beneficial to all participants - the electric utility industry, the manufacturer and, most importantly, electric utility customers. II. Two Problems with Current Energy Production Process

There are two basic problems with todays energy production process, on both generation side and transmission side. 1) On the generation side, its a basic physics principle that electricity is the only commodity simultaneously produced and consumed, unlike the gas and water. The load changes from time to time in 24 hours of a day, as shown in figure 1. Normally, in most utilities, the base load accounts for about 60% of the peak load and the peak hours cover about 10% of the entire time of a day. Meanwhile the installed generation capacity can't change from time to time. It must at least meet the peak load. That is to say, in most utilities, in the 90% of the time of a day, the 40% of the total generation capacity is running at a state of spinning reservation. And because the highest peak load happens on the hottest day of the year, this means almost 50% of the capacity sits idle most of the year[2]. Moreover, as the peak load increases dramatically, more and more plants should be constructed only for the very limited peak hours in a day, and they are idle in the most of the time. This embarrassment wastes many resources and leads to much unnecessary environment pollution.
Load Peak Load Base Load

perspective, the reliability and availability of electrical power supply is in constant danger. These two problems have been bothering utilities and their customers in the past. As customer's expectations of fewer outages, shorter outage durations and informative timely outage updates getting higher, and the government and the public casting more focus on global warming and environmental protection, these problems become more and more tough. In the past decades, pumped-hydro site and continental or national interconnection are the two major ways for them. Both have many benefits, but for the above two issues they are not perfect solutions, because they still follow the idea of large-scale centralized generation and long-distance transmission. III. Distributed Generation, Smart Appliance and Smart Grid Currently, the low-carbon electricity generation and efficient end-use technology are the two hot topics for solving the problems of today's power system, emphasizing the new ideas of energy independence, emergency resilience and demand side management (DSM). The former mainly means the distributed generation and the smart appliance is for the latter. Distributed generation mainly refers to the solar and wind generation. This two tends to be complementary to each other because on days there is no sun there tends to be wind and vice versa. Once they are connected with power grid, they can be used in the following two ways: 1) In the normal operational time, the centralized large-scale generation covers the base and firm part of the total load, and the distributed generation (maybe in a form of electricity storage) covers the incremental part of the total load at peak hours. It can help effectively manage peak electrical demand without increasing supply from fossil fuel generation and lessen peak demand surges for centralized large-scale generation capacity of a day. Also it can reduce the energy losses that is wasted as power is moved from power generation plants to homes, because the electricity is generated very near where it is used, perhaps even in the same building. 2) During electrical fault conditions, the electricity network can be decoupled into several separate sections, so that the available distributed generation

Peak Hours Time Figure 1: A typical daily load curve

2) On the transmission side, because the overhead lines cover long distance and wide area, they suffer from lots of hazards from time to time, not only of natural facts, such as lighting, thunder, snow, and etc, but also of security threats, such as manually damaging or cyber attacking. Once the power delivery channel is damaged and before its fixed in time, the electrical power energy cant be carried to customers site, although the plants have enough generation capacities and the customer's facilities for receiving electrical power are healthy. From a customer's

can supply power to the customers in the unfaulted sections. This will aid in reducing power outage durations, directly increasing customer satisfaction. After the fault is eliminated, these sections can be reunited. Thus the reliability of power supply increases, the customer suffers less loss and the utility makes more profits. So, in theory, due to its two basic features of small-scale generation and locally installation, the distributed generation technology can make strong contributions to solving the above two problems of current power system. In the future, smart appliances at factories or homes, such as dishwashers, electric dryers, refrigerators and pool pumps, will be programmable devices that can be switched off at peak hours and on when power is less expensive, at customer's direction, automatically and remotely. For utility, they act as peak curtailment and can lessen peak demand surges during the day so that less energy is wasted in order to ensure adequate spinning reserves, also the need to build more generation can be delayed. And customer himself can reduce peak electricity usage substantially and enjoy significant savings. The distributed generation and smart appliance can obviously solve the above two problems of today's power system to a great extent. However, everything has double facets. By its nature distributed generation resources provide non-dispatchable intermittent power supply to grid, which is dependent on weather conditions, unlike the conventional dispatchable power of thermal and hydro generation. As large blocks of this type of generation are connected to the grid, a problem is that it makes maintaining the stability and reliability of power transmission and distribution network harder and more complex. The installation of millions of smart appliance means that the direct utility-to-home network communications are needed. That is to say, a more advanced power grid is essential for making use of distributed generation and smart appliance, both with environmental and economic benefits. Today's alternating current power grid evolved from 19th century. Because the power grid is a critical infrastructure to every country, the utility industry holds a relatively conservative attitude to new technology innovations. In the past 50 years, the

modernization of most of the other industries came to realization. However, the electrical power industry itself which supports this process, has not finished its own modernization. It is aging, inefficient, congested, and incapable of meeting the need of large-scale connection with distributed generation resources and smart appliances, and effectively maintaining its own stability. The low-tech electricity grid must be upgraded to support a high-tech world of 21st century. Smart grid is a total series of concepts and ideas to modernize today's electrical power grid. In concept, smart grid is an intelligent two-way network used to deliver base load and alternative energy supply to customer. It integrates energy efficiency, demand response and distributed-resources technologies to enable the grid operators to make intelligent decisions that help them run the grid more efficiently, reliably and at a lower cost. IV. Key Technologies of Smart Grid The goal of smart grid is to eventually construct next-generation power grid on the foundation of presently existing grid, not from scratch. It will introduce many innovative components, such as bulk energy-storage facilities, FACTS equipments, smart recloser and switch, grid frequency regulation devices, and so on, into the traditional power system, both primary and secondary subsystems. But technically, the secondary subsystem, i.e., the automation subsystem, will be the major active domain of smart grid, on both transmission and distribution sides. The smart meter, network communication, and network management solutions are three key technologies for smart grid. 1) Smart meter. At present customer receives electrical power from utility uni-directionally, and is always the energy consumer. In the coming smart grid age, the DERs installed at factory or home can generate more power energy than the actual demand of customer himself, then customer can sell surplus power back to the utility, and at that time the customer can change into an energy supplier. Smart meter must support this type of two-way electrical power transaction. In the future, all the smart appliances and DERs at home will be interconnected to form a home-area network (HAN). Smart meter must act as a router between the

HAN and the information system in control center of utility, providing real-time information about energy consumption to utility and customer, so that the control center can monitor and control the smart appliances in HAN, and the customer can take advantage of time-of-use pricing options to make smarter decisions about his energy use and costs. Smart meter is a necessity for advanced meter infrastructure (AMI) , smart energy pricing (SEP) and residential energy management (REM). 2) Two-way network communication. Communication is the backbone for a smart grid operation. In the future, inside the digital substation or DER farm based on IEC61850 standard, a high-speed and high-availability communication network is needed to connect so many relays and IEDs. After smart meters are deployed at factory or home, control center of utility has to communicate not only with hundreds of substations, but also with millions of factories or homes, a robust high-speed two-way network communication is crucial to the interaction of the information system in control center with the RTUs in substation and the smart meters at home. Along with traditional types of data, the voice or video information will be carried in the communication network. The power line communication (PLC), wireless, and fiber-optic communication methods will be used widely to consolidate and reinforce power grid automation. 3) Information integration solutions (IIS). Currently the network management is intensively referred to as EMS/DMS, which focuses on the real-time information and mainly seeks network security. In the coming smart grid age, traditional EMS/DMS will be expanded into a comprehensive suite of information integration solutions (IIS), which covers not only real-time information but also offline information, not only the information in substation but also the information in HAN, and aims at not only the security of power grid but also the economy of power grid and customer's assets. IIS will continuously monitor status, identify and automatically fix or dispatch teams to outages and provide useful information to improve reliability, efficiency and productivity from power generation through consumption. From the viewpoint of technology, IIS incorporates all the currently

separate functionalities of different applications into a comprehensive solution, so that power grid and customer's assets can be managed efficiently. Specifically, IIS will contain the following functionalities: 1) Monitoring and control of SCADA, 2) Security analysis and network tracing to find key network elements of EMS, 3) Network reconfiguration and fast fault isolation and service restoration (FISR) of DMS, 4) Power system simulating and dispatcher training of DTS, with 3D training modules. 5) Trouble call case management and faster outage prediction and restoration of OMS, together with interactive voice recognition (IVR) and automated vehicle location (AVL) systems, 6) Facility locating and routing within service territory for field personnel and asset health assessment of GIS, with integrated GPS, 7) Other new functionalities, such as online security forewarning analysis and its visualization of Online Stability Solution (OSS), decision-making aids, and so forth. The architecture of IIS is shown in Figure 2.
HMI OMS Engine GIS Engine Relational Database

HMI

Enterprise Gateway

SCADA Engine

EMS/DMS Engine

DTS Engine

Enterprise Gateway

OSS Engine

Real-time Database

RTUs

PMUs

FTUs

Smart Meters

ICCP Sources

Figure 2: Architecture of IIS

All the information integration and exchange within IIS will be based on IEC CIM standards. And its software architecture complies with SOA, supporting Web service. The architecture of IIS just lists its conceptual components. It doesn't mean that a practical information system will necessarily contain all of them.

V. Benefits of Smart Grid It's the initial motivation and the biggest benefit of smart grid to help enable distributed energy resources and smart appliances to become an integral part of a modernized power system. However, with a fully modernized power grid infrastructure, smart grid can bring to us much more than that. 1) Improved energy efficiency can reduce the need for base load, while demand response can be used to reduce peak loads. These two means that constructing more plants can be delayed. 2) The synchronous phasor measurement technology with GPS adopted in smart grid could one day help identify and prevent most potential cascading regional power blackouts. 3) Smart grid is an autonomous and self-healing system, that is, it can automatically detect, analyze and respond to problems and restore electricity service. The system will dynamically collect data from fields, isolate the fault and restore some or all electricity service from adjacent healthy parts in real-time without manual intervention from system operators. 4) Smart grid allows us to begin the testing and research of charging infrastructure necessary to support next-generation transportation innovations, such as plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). The large-scale growth in plug-in electric vehicles will reduce a nation's petroleum consumption and also play an important role in reducing carbon emissions. 5) Cyber security will be enhanced. In theory, a digitized and automated power grid is vulnerable to cyber intrusion. With the increasing frequency of sophisticated malicious cyber attacks around the world, enhancing data and communications security is a top priority. Cyber security problem already exists in today's power grid and so far there is no complete solution for it. It'll be a bigger issue in the coming smart grid age and will be seriously addressed as smart grid technologies and applications are developed. Today many smart grid standards working groups are offering frameworks and recommendations for state-of-the-art security technologies in order to mitigate such threats[3], such as the NERC CIP 002-009 and the NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-53 standards.

VI. Conclusion In brief, Smart grid aims to enhance the safety, reliability and efficiency of energy delivery itself, as well as improve environmental protection, through the deployment of innovative technologies. Smart grid will bring tremendous changes to present electrical network, not only in its business operation mode but also in the economic relationship between utility and customer. The technology itself is only the first step for smart grid, and the national legislation is crucial to it[4]. Only with the support from corresponding laws, policies, and industrial interoperability standards, the economic relationship between power supplier, operation utility, and customer can be defined clearly, the boundaries of responsibility and right between different economic entities can be clarified, software and hardware components from different vendors can work together seamlessly, and all participants can truly benefit from smart grid. At that time a conceptual smart grid can finally evolve into a real one. References [1] Wikipedia. Smart Grid. http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Smart_grid.html [2] Transmission & Distribution World. National Grid Pilots DA. http://tdworld.com/smart_grid_automation/ national-grid-distribution-automation-20090901.html [3] Transmission & Distribution World. Insecurity About Smart Grid Security. http://tdworld.com/smart_ grid_automation/smart-grid-security-report-090501.ht ml [4] Transmission & Distribution World. Creating a Smart Grid. http://tdworld.com/distribution_managem ent_systems/creating_smart_grid.html Author Biographies Jinshuang Hu received B.E. and M.E. from Shanghai Jiaotong University and Tsinghua University, in 1996 and 2004, respectively. He is presently a Senior Engineer in Power System of AREVA T&D CTC and a member of CSEE. His work focuses on the R&D and project operation of EMS solutions. E-mail: hujinshuang@tsinghua.org.cn.