Communication and network security requirements for smart grid

Abstract

To relieve the problems of climate change due to global warming, increased renewable energy generation based on wind and solar has been advocated in the power grid. Due to the intermittent nature of such generation, and the requirement of real-time power balance between generation and consumption, increased renewable energy generation may cause instability in the power grid. The smart grid is an attempt to deploy information and communication technologies (ICT) on the power grid to solve the instability problem due to renewable energy sources. The smart grid also enables customer participation in such applications as differential pricing and demand response and promises improved grid operating efficiencies, self-healing capabilities, and resiliencies against cyber attacks. In this chapter, we discuss the communication and network security requirements for smart grid.