Development of a Remotely Accessible Wireless Testbed for Performance Evaluation of AMI Related Protocols

Although smart meters are deployed in many countries, the data collection process from smart meters in Smart Grid (SG) still has some challenges related to consumer privacy that needs to be addressed. Referred to as Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), the data collected and transmitted through the AMI can leak sensitive information about the consumers if it is sent as a plaintext. While many solutions have been proposed in the past, the deployment of these solutions in real-life was not possible since the actual AMIs were not accessible to researchers. Therefore, a lot of solutions relied on simulations which may not be able to capture the real performance of these solutions. In this thesis, two 802.11s wireless mesh-based SG AMI network testbeds are developed with Beaglebone Black and Raspberry Pi 3 boards to provide a baseline for the simulations. The Raspberry Pi 3 testbed is also configured to be remotely accessible

Smart Meter Data Privacy

Smart grids (SGs) promise to deliver dramatic improvements compared to traditional power grids thanks primarily to the large amount of data being exchanged and processed within the grid, which enables the grid to be monitored more accurately and at a much faster pace. The smart meter (SM) is one of the key devices that enable the SG concept by monitoring a household's electricity consumption and reporting it to the utility provider (UP), i.e., the entity that sells energy to customers, or to the distribution system operator (DSO), i.e., the entity that operates and manages the grid, with high accuracy and at a much faster pace compared to traditional meters. However, the very availability of rich and high-frequency household electricity consumption data, which enables a very efficient power grid management, also opens up unprecedented challenges on data security and privacy. To counter these threats, it is necessary to develop techniques that keep SM data private, and, for this reason, SM privacy has become a very active research area. The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of the most significant privacy-preserving techniques for SM data, highlighting their main benefits and disadvantages

Wide-Area Time-Synchronized Closed-Loop Control of Power Systems And Decentralized Active Distribution Networks

The rapidly expanding power system grid infrastructure and the need to reduce the occurrence of major blackouts and prevention or hardening of systems against cyber-attacks, have led to increased interest in the improved resilience of the electrical grid. Distributed and decentralized control have been widely applied to computer science research. However, for power system applications, the real-time application of decentralized and distributed control algorithms introduce several challenges. In this dissertation, new algorithms and methods for decentralized control, protection and energy management of Wide Area Monitoring, Protection and Control (WAMPAC) and the Active Distribution Network (ADN) are developed to improve the resiliency of the power system. To evaluate the findings of this dissertation, a laboratory-scale integrated Wide WAMPAC and ADN control platform was designed and implemented. The developed platform consists of phasor measurement units (PMU), intelligent electronic devices (IED) and programmable logic controllers (PLC). On top of the designed hardware control platform, a multi-agent cyber-physical interoperability viii framework was developed for real-time verification of the developed decentralized and distributed algorithms using local wireless and Internet-based cloud communication. A novel real-time multiagent system interoperability testbed was developed to enable utility independent private microgrids standardized interoperability framework and define behavioral models for expandability and plug-and-play operation. The state-of-theart power system multiagent framework is improved by providing specific attributes and a deliberative behavior modeling capability. The proposed multi-agent framework is validated in a laboratory based testbed involving developed intelligent electronic device prototypes and actual microgrid setups. Experimental results are demonstrated for both decentralized and distributed control approaches. A new adaptive real-time protection and remedial action scheme (RAS) method using agent-based distributed communication was developed for autonomous hybrid AC/DC microgrids to increase resiliency and continuous operability after fault conditions. Unlike the conventional consecutive time delay-based overcurrent protection schemes, the developed technique defines a selectivity mechanism considering the RAS of the microgrid after fault instant based on feeder characteristics and the location of the IEDs. The experimental results showed a significant improvement in terms of resiliency of microgrids through protection using agent-based distributed communication