Browsing by Subject "Smart Grid"
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Item Design, Simulation, and Analysis of Substation Automation Networks(2012-07-16) Kembanur Natarajan, ElangovanSociety depends on computer networks for communication. The networks were built to support and facilitate several important applications such as email, web browsing and instant messaging. Recently, there is a significant interest in leveraging modern local and wide area communication networks for improving reliability and performance in critical infrastructures. Emerging critical infrastructure applications, such as smart grid, require a certain degree of reliability and Quality of Service (QoS). Supporting these applications requires network protocols that enable delay sensitive packet delivery and packet prioritization. However, most of the traditional networks are designed to provide best effort service without any support for QoS. The protocols used in these networks do not support packet prioritization, delay requirements and reliability. In this thesis, we focus on the design and analysis of communication protocols for supporting smart grid applications. In particular, we focus on the Substation Automation Systems (SAS). Substations are nodes in the smart grid infrastructure that help the in transportation of power by connecting the transmission and distribution lines. The SAS applications are con figured to operate with minimal human intervention. The SAS monitors the line loads continuously. If the load values are too high and can lead to damage, the SAS declares those conditions as faults. On fault detection, the SAS must take care of the communication with the relay to open the circuit to prevent any damage. These messages are of high priority and require reliable, delay sensitive delivery. There is a threshold for the delay of these messages, and a slight increase in the delay above the threshold might cause severe damages. Along with such high priority messages, the SAS has a lot of background traffic as well. In spite of the background traffic, the substation network must take care of delivering the priority messages on time. Hence, the network plays a vital role in the operation of the substation. Networks designed for such applications should be analyzed carefully to make sure that the requirements are met properly. We analyzed and compared the performance of the SAS under di erent network topologies. By observing the characteristics of the existing architectures, we came up with new architectures that perform better. We have suggested several modi cations to existing solutions that allow significant improvement in the performance of the existing solutions.Item Evaluating Utility Executives' Perceptions of Smart Grid Costs, Benefits and Adoption Plans To Assess Impacts on Building Design and Construction(2011-10-21) Rao, Ameya VinayakSmart Grid technology is likely to be implemented in various magnitudes across utilities in the near future. To accommodate these technologies significant changes will have to be incorporated in building design construction and planning. This research paper attempts to evaluate public utility executives? plans to adopt smart grid technologies and to assess timing of smart grid impacts on future design and construction practices. Telephone survey was the data collection method used to collect information from executives at cooperative and municipal utilities. The study focuses on small and medium utilities with more than five thousand customers and fewer than one hundred thousand customers. A stratified random sampling approach was applied and sample results for fifty-nine survey responses were used to predict the timing of smart grid implementation and the timing of smart grid impacts on future design and construction practices. Results of this research indicate that design and construction professionals should already be developing knowledge and experience to accommodate smart grid impacts on the built environment.Item Noncooperative Games for Autonomous Consumer Load Balancing Over Smart Grid(2011-10-21) Agarwal, TarunTraditionally, most consumers of electricity pay for their consumption according to a fixed-rate. The few existing implementations of real time pricing have been restricted to large industrial consumers, where the benefits could justify the high implementation cost. With the advancement of Smart Grid technologies, large scale implementation of variable-rate metering will be more practical. Consumers will be able to control their electricity consumption in an automated fashion, where one possible scheme is to have each individual maximize their own utility as a noncooperative game. In this thesis, noncooperative games are formulated among the consumers of Smart Grid with two real-time pricing schemes, where the Nash equilibrium operation points are investigated for their uniqueness and load balancing properties. The first pricing scheme charges a price according to the average cost of electricity borne by the retailer and the second charges according to a time-variant increasing-block price. The zero revenue model and the constant revenue rate model, are the two revenue models being considered. The relationship between these games and certain congestion games, known as atomic flow games from the computer networking community, is demonstrated. It is shown that the proposed noncooperative game formulation falls under the class of atomic splittable flow games. It is shown that the Nash equilibrium exists for four different cases, with different pricing schemes and revenue models, and is shown to be unique for three of the cases, under certain conditions. It is shown that both pricing schemes lead to similar electricity loading patterns when consumers are interested only in the minimization of electricity costs. Finally, the conditions under which the increasing-block pricing scheme is preferred over the average cost based pricing scheme are discussed.