Communications architecture in modern distribution systems

Distribution automation has become a rapidly growing segment in today´s electric utility industry. Deregulatory and competitive pressures have forced many utilities to consider value-added services to compete. Power quality and reliability of supply concerns have resulted in increased monitoring and control of the power system. Thus, distribution automation has become the primary way to accomplish value-added services and stay competitive in today´s power industry. Decentralized intelligence schemes provide an improvement in reliability. The industry standard performance indices prove the reliability advantages of the decentralized automation scheme