ZTE Communications ›› 2015, Vol. 13 ›› Issue (3): 21-32.DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1673-5188.2015.03.004

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Reliable Remote Relay Protection in Smart Grid

Jiapeng Zhang, Yingfei Dong   

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA
  • Received:2015-04-29 Online:2015-09-25 Published:2015-09-25
  • About author:Jiapeng Zhang (jiapengz@hawaii.edu) received his BS degree in Electronic Information Technology from the Macau University of Science and Technology in 2010 and MS degree in Telecommunication from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2011. He is currently pursuing his PhD degree in University of Hawaii at Manoa. His research interests are network scheduling, planning, simulation, and smart grid communication.
    Yingfei Dong (yingfei@hawaii.edu) received his BS degree and MS degree in computer science at Harbin Institute of Technology, China, in 1989 and 1992, his Doctor degree in engineering at Tsinghua University in 1996, and his PhD degree in computer and information science at the University of Minnesota in 2003. He is currently an associated professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His current research mostly focuses on computer networks, especially in network security, smart grid communication security, cloud security, real-time networks reliable communications, Internet services, and distributed systems. His work has been published in many referred journals and conferences. He has served as both organizer and program committee member for many IEEE/ ACM/IFIP conferences. He is also serving on several editorial boards for journals on security and networking. His current research is supported by National Science Foundation.

Reliable Remote Relay Protection in Smart Grid

Jiapeng Zhang, Yingfei Dong   

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA
  • 作者简介:Jiapeng Zhang (jiapengz@hawaii.edu) received his BS degree in Electronic Information Technology from the Macau University of Science and Technology in 2010 and MS degree in Telecommunication from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2011. He is currently pursuing his PhD degree in University of Hawaii at Manoa. His research interests are network scheduling, planning, simulation, and smart grid communication.
    Yingfei Dong (yingfei@hawaii.edu) received his BS degree and MS degree in computer science at Harbin Institute of Technology, China, in 1989 and 1992, his Doctor degree in engineering at Tsinghua University in 1996, and his PhD degree in computer and information science at the University of Minnesota in 2003. He is currently an associated professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His current research mostly focuses on computer networks, especially in network security, smart grid communication security, cloud security, real-time networks reliable communications, Internet services, and distributed systems. His work has been published in many referred journals and conferences. He has served as both organizer and program committee member for many IEEE/ ACM/IFIP conferences. He is also serving on several editorial boards for journals on security and networking. His current research is supported by National Science Foundation.

Abstract: As the false trips of remote protection relays are among the main reasons behind cascading blackouts, it is critical to design reliable relay protection. Even though common protection schemes on traditional power systems have been investigated for a few decades, cascading failures in recent years indicate more research needed in this area. Consequently, researchers have proposed agent-based methods on the Smart Grid (SG) to address this issue. However, these existing agent-based methods simply use TCP protocol without considering real-time communication requirements (such as bandwidth and delay). To deal with this issue, several methods for efficient network resource management are proposed. Furthermore, these existing methods do not consider the potential issues in practical communication networks, which may result in delay violation and trigger relay false trips. We have discussed simple backup solutions in the previous work. In this paper, in addition to network efficiency, we focus on improving the system reliability by exploring known power system information and minimizing the chances of false trips of important remote relays, e.g., defining power line priorities based on their importance. Moreover, to further improve the system reliability, we also investigate the peer-to-peer protection approaches to address the single point of failure of centralized control center.

Key words: zone 3 relay, cascading failure, real-time communications, smart grid protection, power-aware resource management

摘要: As the false trips of remote protection relays are among the main reasons behind cascading blackouts, it is critical to design reliable relay protection. Even though common protection schemes on traditional power systems have been investigated for a few decades, cascading failures in recent years indicate more research needed in this area. Consequently, researchers have proposed agent-based methods on the Smart Grid (SG) to address this issue. However, these existing agent-based methods simply use TCP protocol without considering real-time communication requirements (such as bandwidth and delay). To deal with this issue, several methods for efficient network resource management are proposed. Furthermore, these existing methods do not consider the potential issues in practical communication networks, which may result in delay violation and trigger relay false trips. We have discussed simple backup solutions in the previous work. In this paper, in addition to network efficiency, we focus on improving the system reliability by exploring known power system information and minimizing the chances of false trips of important remote relays, e.g., defining power line priorities based on their importance. Moreover, to further improve the system reliability, we also investigate the peer-to-peer protection approaches to address the single point of failure of centralized control center.

关键词: zone 3 relay, cascading failure, real-time communications, smart grid protection, power-aware resource management