1. Impact of Realistic Tele-Communications for Fast-acting Demand Side Management
P. Dambrauskas, M.H. Syed, S.M. Blair, J.M. Irvine,
I.F. Abdulhadi, G.M. Burt
University of Strathclyde – UK
ETP Annual Conference th October 2017

2. Transformational change in the power grid
New measurement and control applications
Integration of new energy resources
R. Mattioli, K. Moulinos, “Communication network interdependencies in smart grids”, ENISA activities, critical infrastructures and services, Communication network interdependencies in smart grids, [Online] Available:

3. Frequency balancing and demand side resources
We need reliable and cheap frequency balancing resources due to the rise of renewable generation
Existence of 22 demand side aggregators present in Great Britain shows the interest system operators in smaller and distributed energy resources
Intermittency
Decreasing Inertia
Need Faster resources

4. Tele-Communications networks: Core
BT offers Service Level Agreement guarantees:
“On all BTnet Leased Line products, our Service Level Agreement guarantees you a latency of less than 20ms (measured from core UK node to core UK node)”
Kitz,“BT 21CN - Network Topology & Technology”, [Online] Available: accessed 2017

5. Tele-Communications networks: WAN
According to AT&T, latencies for deployed 4G networks is
40-50ms
Ilya Grigorik, “Mobile Networks”, PERFORMANCE OF WIRELESS NETWORKS, CHAPTER 7, [Online] Available: accessed September 2017

6. Tele-Communications networks: NAN
ZigBee is the most well known mesh network technology
Low performance (250 kbits/s)
Uses shared spectrum
Uncertain reliability

7. Tele-Communications networks: HAN
ZigBee is also a technology that is widely used in the house network
Uses shared spectrum
Uncertain reliability

8. Performance of tele-communications
Note: this presentation is substantiated by :A. Derviskadic; P. Romano; M. Pignati; M. Paolone, "Architecture and Experimental Validation of a Low-Latency Phasor Data Concentrator," in IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid , vol.PP, no.99, pp.1-1 which shows measured performance of a Core and LTE networks – the results are almost identical to what is presented
The overall latency for an activation signal is between 1 and 4.5 seconds

9. Requirements of ancillary services in UK
We need a response to a frequency deviation within 10 seconds for primary frequency response
UK’s enhanced frequency response expects a sub second response

10. Conclusions
Communications is the enabler of the smart grid which makes it possible for Domestic loads to be part of ancillary services
The role of DSM in ancillary services will depend on the communications technologies used
Many technologies with different performance

11. Future work
Analysis of the impact communications can have on frequency balancing using a RTDS based power system -communications test-bed
A significant amount of uncertainty about the performance of smart grid enabled applications still remains