Smart Grid — The New and Improved Power Grid: A Survey

TLDR

The Smart Grid is a next‑generation power network that employs bidirectional flows of electricity and information to enable a widely distributed, automated energy delivery system. This survey reviews literature up to 2011 on the enabling technologies of the Smart Grid and outlines prospective future directions for its three core systems. The authors examine the smart infrastructure, management, and protection systems, detailing their subsystems, objectives, methods, and security and reliability measures.

Abstract

The Smart Grid, regarded as the next generation power grid, uses two-way flows of electricity and information to create a widely distributed automated energy delivery network. In this article, we survey the literature till 2011 on the enabling technologies for the Smart Grid. We explore three major systems, namely the smart infrastructure system, the smart management system, and the smart protection system. We also propose possible future directions in each system. colorred{Specifically, for the smart infrastructure system, we explore the smart energy subsystem, the smart information subsystem, and the smart communication subsystem.} For the smart management system, we explore various management objectives, such as improving energy efficiency, profiling demand, maximizing utility, reducing cost, and controlling emission. We also explore various management methods to achieve these objectives. For the smart protection system, we explore various failure protection mechanisms which improve the reliability of the Smart Grid, and explore the security and privacy issues in the Smart Grid.