ICT architecture for the Smart Grid: Concept overview

摘要

Building the right ICT infrastructure for a Smart Grid solution can be essential in order to fulfill the Smart Grid potential. Although in the past decade, energy distribution companies have been listing the Smart Grid design and deployment among their primary concerns, the domain is still in its infancy, with no proper guidelines or reliable best practices for designing and implementing the ICT architecture well supporting the Smart Grid. On the other hand, many pilot projects have been implemented in the past years, which start to create a solid basis for a study that could result in such guidelines. This paper aims at consolidating the state of the art in the ICT architecture concepts for the Smart Grid, and presents them in a single picture that could create the basis for further discussions on the alternative Smart Grid architecture designs, as well as understanding the similarities and differences among these alternatives.