Communication system for Smart Grids EE-576

M.ENGG. ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING PROGRAMME, FALL SEMESTER 2022

INSTRUCTOR: DR. SUNDUS ALI, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERING, NED UET

Week 11 TOPIC:
Smart Grid Network Design Process

Email: [email protected], [email protected]

Office Location: Telecommunication Engineering Building Faculty Offices
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Traffic Aggregation and Routing Architecture

 One of the main advantages of the network architecture is the ability to aggregate traffic.
 Traffic aggregation is supported at WRs, where traffic from multiple endpoint locations is
aggregated.
 Aggregation is supported at the CRs located at substations and other locations. Not only does a
CR aggregate traffic generated at that location, but it may also aggregate traffic generated at
nearby locations.
 One clear advantage of traffic aggregation is cost savings: fewer links need to be deployed in
the networks that use aggregations compared to those that do not. Generally, the total cost of
multiple links is larger than the cost of a single link carrying the same volume of traffic.
 Network design tools are typically able to determine the optimal placement of aggregation
nodes in the network to minimize the costs of the links. In many cases, the network designer
needs to make adjustments to the output of the network design tool to add or delete the
aggregation nodes and modify the design based on the possibilities or constraints.
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Routing Protocols

 Routers that support traffic aggregation must also support routing.

 Routing allows incoming traffic at the router to be dynamically routed to the destination
over the optimal path. One of the most important features of IP networks is the use of
routing protocols to maintain the current view of network connectivity at each router.
 OSPF and Intermediate System – IS–IS are the two standard routing protocols used most
in IP networks.
 Network configurations may change with node or link failures. Using network information
exchanged between the routers, each network router maintains the current network
configuration. Other network parameters such as link capacity and delays on each link
may also be stored at the routers.
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Routing Protocols

 Based on this information, an optimal path between every pair of network endpoints is calculated
by each router.
 OSPF supports the use of many different objective functions for the shortest path including the total
number of network hops and total delay between the pairs of endpoints. The router maintains a
routing table that maps each endpoint to the next hop from this router based on the shortest path.
 To keep the routing table up-to-date, shortest paths are recomputed after every change in the
network (e.g., network failure, recovery after failure, addition of a node or a link, or deletion of a
node or a link).
 Traffic aggregation also helps in disaster recovery, quickly diverting all traffic from a (primary) DCC
to a backup DCC, thereby minimizing disruption to network and grid operations. Since the
endpoints are connected through the WRs, there is no need for endpoints to connect directly to
either of the DCCs.
 In the event that the primary DCC is disconnected from the network, the WRs can now route the
traffic to the backup DCC. The switchover from the primary to backup DCC can be configured in
the network and, depending on product support, can be achieved automatically.
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Network Performance

 Network performance is an integral part of the Smart Grid application performance, since
performance requirements for the Smart Grid applications, in part, translate into the network
performance requirements for the Smart Grid network. Quality of service (QoS) design is used to
deliver the network delay and priority objectives derived from the Smart Grid application
performance requirements.
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Delays and Priorities

 Utility operations require that timely actions be taken in controlling the grid elements when faults or
other anomalous behaviors are observed based on grid measurements. Each application has its
own requirement on the overall delay that can be tolerated from the time an anomaly occurs to
the time it is fixed. Thus, grid operations performance requirements drive network performance
requirements, including the delay experienced by network traffic carrying network monitoring
information (measurements and status) as well as power grid control signals.
 For tele-protection applications, for example, delays between the time when a transmission line
fault is detected and the circuit breaker tripped longer than a few milliseconds are unacceptable.
A somewhat larger (but still small) delay is acceptable for delivering the synchrophasor
measurements to WASA&C system.
 Timely delivery of synchrophasor measurements is required, so that synchronized measurements
from the PMU can be analyzed in a timely manner to ensure the integrity of the interconnection of
utility grids. SCADA measurements require network delays not exceed several hundred
milliseconds, whereas consumer meter measurements may tolerate delays of many seconds.
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Delays and Priorities

 remarks on Table 7.3:

1. Delay allowances listed are end-to-end “one-way” delays.
2. Delay allowances refer to the acceptable delay for the traffic for each application function. Note
that only minimum delay allowance is specified. The actual delay allowance requirements may be
higher based on utility requirements.
3. Traffic for different functions associated with an application may require different treatment. Higher
delays and lower priorities may be acceptable for the interval measurements.
4. Most of the delay allowances shown are based on the delay requirements specified in IEEE
standard 1646, RFC 4594, ITU-T Recommendations G.107 and G.114.
5. There was little effort toward providing quantitative characterization of priorities for Smart Grid
application functions. For a very granular QoS design, it is important to assign relative priorities to the
traffic from different application functions.
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Delays and Priorities

6. The measurement, status, event reporting, and control functions of various operations have been
given very close but distinct priorities emphasizing the relative priority afforded to SCADA over DA,
DA over DG/DS, and DG/DS over DLR functions.
7. Generally, priority for traffic with lower delays is higher than that for traffic with higher delay
allowances. This assignment of priorities accounts for scenarios in which packets queued at router
egress links must contend for transmission. There are exceptions, however. Traffic with very low
delay requirement can have a lower priority over traffic for an application with somewhat higher
delay requirement. For example, guaranteed delivery of a high-priority packet within its delay
allowance can be crucial for certain operations functions, whereas a low-priority packet delivered
late (with its actual delay higher than its very low delay allowance) can simply be ignored (or
discarded) since an isolated incidence of such delayed packet is not crucial.
8. The actual delay and priority requirements needed for the network design should be created
based on utility requirements for Smart Grid performance in general and network performance in
particular.
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QoS Considerations in Smart Grid Network

 In the Smart Grid network architecture, each of the WAN links connecting the WRs and IRs carries
traffic for many applications with varying delay requirements from a few milliseconds to several
seconds. This is also the case for FAN links, such as the link between the CR at a substation and a
WR.
 For example, the FAN link between the cluster router (CR) in distribution substation connecting to
a WR may carry traffic for some or all of the following applications: SCADA, DA, DG, EVs,
distributed DMS, business voice and data, CCTV, and AMI.
 Each of these applications has different delay and priority requirements. If the CR is located at a
transmission substation, the link may additionally carry synchrophasor traffic, traffic that requires
high data rates and more stringent performance requirements. The use of high-bandwidth links
alone without QoS and priority enforcement does not provide an adequate solution.
 High-bandwidth links are expensive. In addition, even with high-bandwidth links, a packet of an
application with very low delay requirements may need to wait behind a (possibly very large)
number of packets of applications that can tolerate large delays, since without QoS, the packets
will egress the router in the first-in-first-out order.
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QoS Considerations in Smart Grid Network

 Allocating exclusive bandwidth to traffic of each application is also not a practical solution:
such allocation requires a large overall link bandwidth. A QoS design that provides scheduling of
packets on the egress link of the router is necessary – based on requirements of different
applications. Implementation of QoS is necessary on links between WRs and IRs and between a
CR and a WR.
 These links are often sized to support the links’ average expected data rates with additional
margin to accommodate variations of the traffic. However, the link bandwidth may be
insufficient to support dynamic traffic load (e.g., due to network congestion). In that case, some
of the traffic may need to be stored temporarily at the router causing additional delay.
 Further, since router buffer capacity is limited, the increased traffic load may result in packet loss.
QoS design is the determination of policies and procedures necessary to achieve the delay and
priority objectives under limited networking resources: link data rate capacity and router buffer
storage.
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Per-Hop Behavior

 As indicated before, QoS implementation is often achieved by configuring the per-hop behavior
(PHB) at each router. transmitted on the egress link to router R2 (according to the routing table at
R1).
 Router R1 has received these packets (to be sent to router R2) from all its neighbors (except from
router R2). Due to the network conditions, packets awaiting transmission to router R2 are queued.
The link to router R2 is currently transmitting a packet from application C. There are two, four, and
three packets generated by applications A, B, and C, respectively, awaiting transmission to router
R2.
 Suppose that application A has the highest priority, followed by applications B and C. Assume the
following simple scheduling algorithm is used: the packet from the highest-priority application is
transmitted as soon as the egress link to R2 is available. If there are more than one packet for the
same application waiting for transmission, these packets are transmitted in the first-in-first-out
order.
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 It is clear from Fig. 7.3 that all packets for applications A and B and zero or more packets for
application C waiting at the router must have arrived after the start time of the transmission of
the packet that is currently being transmitted.
 Once the transmission of this packet is completed, the two waiting packets with highest priority,
those from application, will be transmitted. In the meantime, if the currently incoming packet
from router R4 arrives at R1, that packet (being of application A) will also be transmitted, the
packets of application B will continue to wait, and so on.
 This was a very simple scheduling algorithm. The actual scheduling algorithms may vary. In
addition to the scheduling of packets on the egress links, the PHB may include other functions to
satisfy the QoS requirements. The router may police the incoming traffic, enforcing the rate at
which an incoming stream of packets from an application is accepted at router R1.
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 Packets arriving at a higher rate are discarded on their arrival if there is no buffer space available
at the router allocated to that application.
 For example, if router R1 now received a packet from application B on the incoming link from
router R3, but the incoming rate now exceeds the rate configured for application B, then that
new incoming packet is discarded by router R1 even if it is received without an error.
 Another QoS function that may be implemented is the assignment of a discard probability for
each class of packets (with lower discard probability for higher-priority applications). If the router
buffer overflows, the packets in the buffer may be removed and discarded based on their
discard probability to admit new incoming packets from applications with higher priority.
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