Content area
Abstract
Smart grid is a revolutionary upgrade to traditional power grid by adding communication capabilities and intelligence. In this dissertation, smart grid communication infrastructures are studied as a complete information and communication technologies (ICT) framework with both private and public networks. In particular, communication networks of the advanced metering infrastructure are studied. A self-sustaining neighborhood area network as well as the network connections among home area networks, neighborhood area networks, and wide area networks are studied. With the proposed ICT framework, demand response (DR) is studied to show that DR can improve the efficiency of grid operations by balancing the demand and supply of electricity. Other positive impacts of implementing DR are also addressed in this dissertation, for example, DR can lower the electricity cost of customers.
Furthermore, network security of the studied infrastructures is studied in this dissertation. Specifically, security protocols and schemes are proposed for the advanced metering infrastructure mainly to protect metering data from attacks since metering data contains much privacy information of customers. Identity-based security schemes are proposed for the communications over the Internet in smart grid, especially for the data from/to the cloud control center.
In addition to the communication technologies, big data and cloud computing are introduced in the studied infrastructures. Smart grid will generate a massive amount of data in the near future. Useful information such as price forecast and energy forecast can be extracted with proper techniques (e.g., big data analytics, machine learning, etc.). In this dissertation, energy forecast is demonstrated achievable using a case study. In order to apply big data analytics and other complicate techniques, cloud computing is introduced as a cost-effective solution.
Finally, some of the open issues and research directions in smart grid communication infrastructures are pointed out in this dissertation.
