Designing an Efficient Communication Infrastructure for the Power Grid

Sammanfattning: A step towards renewable energy is the smart grid, i.e. a power grid that is capable of smart distribution and load managing. This requires the participating components, nodes, to be able to communicate in a reliable fashion. The work of this project was to take on a mathematical approach by using the study of network science, which resulted in the design of a communication network topology for the power grid. The main focus of this undertaking was to quantify how a node in the power grid reacts to change in power flow, which was denoted as its sensitivity. By using Matpower, a tool programmed in Matlab, and our developed method, a communication network was able to be designed using a threshold algorithm. This method worked for the small scale power grids considered in this project, but a different approach might be needed for larger grids.