Can we really predict our future Smart Grid communication needs?
Can we really predict our future Smart Grid communication needs?
The very simple answer to this question is “NO, we cannot predict what we’ll need for the Smart Grid”, at least in terms of communications capabilities. We may know what is required TODAY to support some applications like Automatic Metering Infrastructure (AMI) or Distribution Automation, but we don’t know what we’ll need a few years from now. (And the communications network is not a small part of the Smart Grid; quite the opposite, as stated in this article by Cap Gemini “Why Your Smart Grid Must Start with Communications“.
This is obviously a problem for utilities planning Smart Grid deployments.
We can make an estimation of our communications needs based on the applications we know today, but most likely 10 or 15 years from now we’ll realize that new applications require much more bandwidth than originally planned. When that happens, utilities may have to face the hard decision of upgrading their Smart Grid communications network again.
Taxpayers and shaholders will not be happy if that happens.
Utilities have a big challenge in front of them; a complete change is coming to the grid, a change that will revolutionize the energy industry and how electricity is distributed and consumed in the same way in which the Internet changed how we communicate with each other. The Smart Grid could learn a lot from the Internet. Well, one of the things we know about the Internet is that bandwidth demands are always increasing, and always faster than predicted.
So, what should utilities do?
Well, as this presentation from Amperion says, they should “avoid the AMI trap” (ie, deploying narrow-band communication technologies that have just enough bandwidth to support AMI, but that cannot scale for new applications). They should try to err on the safe side, and deploy Smart Grid communications technologies with plenty of bandwidth, that are guaranteed to provide data rates high enough to scale to any application that may be required during the next 15 years.
(And, by the way, they should focus strictly on IP-based technologies, instead of vertically integrated systems with limited multi-vendor interoperability.)
We are fully aware that we cannot predict the future and that is why we decided to design a communication system as flexible as possible, and with enough bandwidth to make it future-proof for many years.
Various IP Chips can be used to build cost-effective power line communication systems that are easily adapted to any part of the Smart Grid, from the Transport network to the Medium Voltage and Low Voltage Distribution networks and into the home, including a variety of topologies (both high and low density of homes per transformer, overhead and underground lines, 110 and 220 volts, etc)
Chips need to support Physical Layer data rates up 200 Mbit/s. This may seem overkill for today’s Smart Grid networks, but if you take into account that the bandwidth is shared among potentially hundreds of devices, and that the network must support all applications that may appear during the next 15 years or more, very soon 200 Mbit/s does not seem so high.
Chips need to target different parts of the Smart Grid:
- High performance chips optimized for the Transport and Distribution networks, with enough horse power and memory to handle networks with hundreds or thousands of IP-enabled nodes.
- Ability to optimized for embedding into Smart Meters, as part of an AMI network.
- (100 Mbit/s) and (200 Mbit/s), which are optimized for home energy management applications.
