Communication Challenges for Electric Power Transmission Systems

Uninterrupted electric power supply and transmission is a part of critical infrastructure for any nation’s security, economy and healthcare systems. Essential requirements for operating and managing an industrial control system is the secure and instant data transfer between control centers and generation stations or substations. This paper review the general Energy Management System architecture implemented for the Hellenic Power Transmission System. It gives a possible direction to best suited SCADA system network communication by emphasizing on the security. A brief study of the communication protocols is also presented. This work focuses on the key role of telecommunication provision for critical distributed control infrastructures. Based on the relative analysis presented in this paper directions towards a secure critical infrastructures network communications are provided. Subject Classification Numbers: 68M01, 68M10, 94A05.