Resilient overlay networks for the distributed provision of aggregated power systems services

With the emergence of Distributed Generation, a subset of Distributed Energy Resources, renewable energy sources and consumer participation, a new set of applications emerges that leads into the next generation of the power grid. The smart grid extends the power grid with communication technologies that can handle the massive amounts of information that are generated by sensors at distributed locations, enables advanced coordination of DERs for controlling consumption and generation, allows for informed consumer participation, provides for efficient energy management including peak power reduction and facilitates new products, services and markets.
The distributed and decentralized nature of overlay networks makes them well suited to meet the requirements of the future smart grid. Overlay networks are virtual networks that are built on top of existing networks and provide the mechanisms for peer discovery, identification, routing and session establishment. Overlay networks can provide resilience, QoS aware routing, predictable latency and scalability by reacting and adapting to the underlying network. The goal of this Ph.d project is to investigate technical options for distributed, provider and service agnostic communication between power system entities based on self-maintaining overlay networks. The project will consider the implications of applying peer to peer concepts of overlay networks to the smart grid; how the applications of the smart grid can benefit from overlay networks and what the limitations of doing so are.