A Survey of Wireless Communications for the Electric Power System

Abstract

Executive SummaryA key mission of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE) is conducting research and development to enhance the security and reliability of the nation's energy infrastructure. Improving the security of control systems, which enable the automated control of our energy production and distribution, is critical for protecting the energy infrastructure and the integral function that it serves. The DOE-OE Control Systems Security Program is actively pursuing advanced security solutions for control systems.The focus of this report is analyzing how, where, and what type of wireless communications are suitable for deployment in the electric power system and to inform implementers of their options in wireless technologies. The discussions in this report are applicable to enhancing both the communications infrastructure of the current electric power system and new smart system deployments.The work described in this report includes a survey of the following wireless technologies: In this document, we provide a concise summary of the technical underpinnings of each wireless technology. We also outline the feature set and the strengths and weaknesses of each technology. Our intent is to provide enough detail to our readers such that when considering wireless for a particular application, they will know enough to ask the right questions to get the features and capabilities desired.For obtaining data communications coverage quickly and inexpensively over a large geographic area, both WiMAX and 3G/4G cellular technologies should be considered. WiMAX at the present holds a bandwidth and latency advantage over 3G cellular communications; however, with the imminent LTE deployment from multiple carriers, we believe this advantage will be short-lived. Unlike WiMAX deployments, LTE will mostly reuse existing cellular networks and should be a straightforward evolution of the 3G cellular networks. Both of these technologies operate over licensed spectrum and therefore should be protected against unintended interference. In terms of scalability, we know that the cellular networks are capable of accommodating hundreds of millions of subscribers while providing both voice and data communications. WiMAX networks have been deployed to provide wireless local loop service successfully. However, presently, WiMAX networks only support a small fraction of users compared to 3G cellular networks. Whether using WiMAX or 3G/4G cellular, we recommend a combination of application-level security and virtual private networking (VPN) for transporting electric power system information over these public networks.For creating a wireless sensor network for both data gathering and command/control applications, there are three alternatives, all based on the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol stack: ZigBee, WirelessHART, and ISA100.11a. We expect ZigBee to be a common choice for electric power system networking within the iv home. While there are legitimate concerns for the security properties of ZigBee ...

Introduction

“…Here, we introduce important wireless communication technologies that are strong candidates for SG, including wireless mesh networks (WMN), cellular communication systems, satellite communications, Wi-Fi, and Zigbee. For other communication technologies such as cognitive radio, microwave, free space optical communications, please refer to [41][42][43][44].…”

“…The wide application of cellular communication systems has proved its effectiveness and efficiency. As a mature system with many base stations deployed, it is convenient to be applied in SG covering a large area [44].…”

“…And the ultralow power Wi-Fi chips [45] of energy efficient features extend the lifetime toward conventional Wi-Fi. Zigbee is also a standard widely used in WSN [44], which has been widely deployed in environment monitoring and thus is a strong candidate for SG monitoring. For better services and further applications in SG, special routing infrastructure, security protection and quality-of-service are required [46].…”

Towards understanding the benefits and challenges of Smart/Micro-Grid for electricity supply system in Nigeria

“…Communication architectures and technologies for SG have been reviewed and discussed extensively in Refs. [91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98].…”

Compositional Modeling of Partial Discharge Pulse Spectral Characteristics

“…The first, published by EPRI [9], investigated wireless connectivity options for electric substations and made technology recommendations for specific application classes. The second, published by the US Department of Energy [10], took a wider view to look at wireless communications standards for use within the electricity industry as a whole. These strategic studies demonstrate that there is a an impetus for the use of wireless sensor networks for power system monitoring brought on by the requirement for increased observability of power system assets for the 'smart grid', the high capital cost of cabling within substations (upwards of $2000 USD per foot [11]), coupled with maturing technology and ratification of industrial wireless sensor network standards such as ISA100.11a and WirelessHART [12].…”