Assessment of communication technologies and network requirements for different smart grid applications

Our current electric power grid was built over 100 years ago based on simple demand and supply requirements. With emerging technologies, availability of small-scale distributed energy sources and higher customer expectations, two-way information flow, communication architecture, as well as smart sensing and metering technologies are being incorporated into the current power grid. The objective of this paper is to compare different communication technologies and assess their suitability for deployment to serve various smart grid applications. Both wired and wireless communication technologies are compared in terms of their data rates and coverage ranges. Comprehensive assessment is performed to evaluate suitability of different communication technologies for use to enable different smart grid applications based on specific network requirements.