Smart Control of Energy Distribution Grids over Heterogeneous Communication Networks: Impact of communication network performance on voltage control and energy balancing

Off-the shelf wireless communication technologies reduce infrastructure deployment costs and are thus attractive for distribution system control. Wireless communication however may lead to variable network performance. Hence the impact of this variability on overall distribution system control behavior needs to be analyzed within the full system context. This paper considers two prominent families of wireless communication technologies: cellular 2G to 4G systems and IEEE 802.11 WiFi. Selected results on network performance and its impact on two distribution system control use-cases are presented. The main focus is on the impact of varying cross-traffic levels, different deployment and propagation scenarios, as well as malicious attacks. A full communication protocols stack, ranging from bare socket interfaces to full-scale IEC61850 implementations with security features, is used within physical testbeds as well as model-based analysis.