SMARTGRID – plc-tec AG

PLUS SMART GRID

Cost-effective data communication for monitoring, protection and automation of the Medium Voltage Grid 

The Challenge

Worldwide pressure is increasing on the Distribution Grids with the rapid introduction of Distributed Renewable Energy Resources such as wind/solar farms, and loads such as electric vehicles. Future grids must be kept robust to accommodate new energy flow patterns with a high time dynamic characteristic due to the vast amount of spatially distributed sources with time-varying generation.

This requires smart monitoring, protection and automation (MPA) techniques which have been proven successfully already for the Transmission Grid. However, some MPA applications demand high (Mission- & Time Critical – MTC) communication requirements in terms of latency, reliability, etc. which are today only fulfilled by costly broadband networks e.g. fiber optic.

Our Solution – PLUS SMART GRID

PLUS SMART GRID enables such a cost-effective communication network by transmitting MTC MPA data over the existing medium voltage grid cables between MPA devices, e.g. in the Secondary Substations. 

PLUS SMART GRID integrates in addition a highly accurate external reference time PLUS TIME SYNC in order to support e.g. synchrophasor applications. GPS is generally not seen as suitable in the Distribution Grid as it is often not possible to install the necessary antenna within all Secondary Substations and there are major concerns with the susceptibility of the GPS signal to attacks and spoofing.

PLUS SMART GRID has been installed and tested in a Secondary Substation cluster in a distribution grid of Bernische Kraftwerke BKW near Berne.

KEY BENEFITS of PLUS SMART GRID

Mission-and-Time-Critical robustness, determinism, low latency

Robust real-time transmission between Secondary Substationss with physical data rates of several Mbps and latency down to the range of 5 ms

Bus arbitration based on a deterministic protocol

Peer-to-peer architecture with no single point-of-failure

Stateless connections minimize setup and recovery times

Multiplexing of multiple data services onto a single bus

Further information

PLUS SMART GRID: Smart Grid Multi-Service Communication Network Pilot

PLUS TIME SYNC: Precise Time Synchronization of Phasor Measurement Units with Broadband Power Line Communications

PLUS SMART GRID: Mission- & Time-Critical Medium Voltage Broadband Power Line Communications for Synchrophasor Applications in the Distribution Grid