Power line communications for smart grids applications

Abstract

Smart grids (SGs) can be considered as an evolution of the current energy model to optimally manage the balance between power supply and demand and meet the energy needs of the modern world. One of the key elements of the SGs to achieve this goal is a bidirectional information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, with real-time monitoring, control and self-healing capability. Among potential telecommunications technologies, power line communications (PLCs) appear as a strong candidate to integrate this ICT infrastructure by having some interesting features for applications in SGs. For example, they can exploit the existing electric grid infrastructure to reduce deployment costs, provide a low-cost alternative to complement existing technologies in the search of ubiquitous coverage and establish high data rate communication through obstacles that typically degrade wireless communications. In order to understand the role of PLCs in SGs applications, this chapter will introduce a brief overview of how power grids are structured, then some fundamental characteristics of SGs will be shown and, finally, some possible applications of PLC technologies in SGs will be presented. Some of the key topics discussed here will be dealt with more deeply in next chapters.