ICT Technologies, Standards and Protocols for Active Distribution Network Automation and Management

Abstract

The concept of active distribution network (ADN) is evolved to address the high penetration of renewables in the distribution network. To leverage the benefits of ADN, effective communication and information technology is required. Various communication standards to facilitate standard-based communication in distribution network have been proposed in literature. This chapter presents various communication standards and technologies that can be employed in ADN. Among various communication standards, IEC 61850 standard has emerged as the de facto standard for power utility automation. IEC 61850-based information modeling for ADN entities has also been presented in this chapter. To evaluate the performance of ADN communication architecture, performance metrics and performance evaluation tools have also been presented in this chapter.To facilitate standard communication in the power distribution networks, various standards and protocols such as IEEE P2030, IEC 60870-5, IEEE C37.118.1/2, Distributed Network Protocol (DNP3), IEC 61850, IEC 61970 and IEC 61968, OpenADR, etc., have been developed. This chapter will present a comprehensive analysis of these state-of-the-art standards and protocols for application in ADNs. The challenges presented by these standards are of feasibility, flexibility and interoperability. In this regard IEC 61850 is emerging as one of the most popular and widely accepted solutions since it is based on the interoperability approach and provides flexibility in implementation [2].For information exchange between different components of ADN different communication technologies have been explored in literature [3,4]. This chapter enlists and provides a detailed study of different communication technologies that can be employed in ADNs. The presence of RERs and DERs in ADNs introduces intermittency, thus the communication architecture for ADN must be highly scalable. To address the scalability issue in the smart grid communication architectures Web protocols have been employed. The proposed chapter will present a detail study of the different Web protocols and their suitability for ADNs [5].The performance of different communication network architectures is evaluated for network latency, quality-of-service (QoS), robustness, reliability and data security to determine its applicability and suitability in ADNs. This chapter will discuss the different simulator tools for evaluating the performance of ADN communication networks. An overview of different real-time test beds and state-of-the-art co-simulation platforms of interfacing power system simulators and ICT simulators will be presented. ICT Technologies, Standards and Protocols for Active Distribution Network Automation and… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86457 signals, critical alarms, etc., are critical in nature and requires guaranteed delivery to the destination. A ADN can operate in grid connected as well as islanded mode. To switch over from one ADN operation from one mode to another requires communication of commands from AD...

Distribution System State Estimation Using Hybrid Traditional and Advanced Measurements for Grid Modernization

“…PMUs have been widely used for wide-area monitoring, protection, and the control of TNs [58]. However, PMUs have not been deployed widely in ADNs due to economic constraints as well as structure of the DNs [59,60]. DN monitoring will be enhanced by incorporating more PMUs in an ongoing modernization effort for ADNs due to the following reasons [61,62]:…”

“…Tracking the dynamic behaviors of ADNs could be captured using high-resolution PMU data in DSSE calculations. SE results will be enhanced by including different measurement data from multiple measuring instruments due to redundancy [60]. However, measuring information integration from different sources is not straightforward for two main reasons [63]:…”