11-02-2013, 03:18 PM
Managing Smart Grid Information in the Cloud: Opportunities, Model, and Applications
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Abstract
Smart Grid (SG), regarded as the next generation
electric grid, will use advanced power, communication, and
information technologies to create an automated, intelligent,
and widely distributed energy delivery network. In this article,
we explore how Cloud Computing (CC), a next-generation
computing paradigm, can be used for information management
of the SG and present a novel SG information management
paradigm, called Cloud Service based SG Information Management
(CSSGIM). We analyze the benefits and opportunities from
the perspectives of both the SG domain and the CC domain.
We further propose a model for CSSGIM and present four
motivating applications.
INTRODUCTION
Smart Grid (SG), an enhancement of the 20th century
electrical grid, is regarded as a system that uses two-way communication
and information technologies, and computational
intelligence in an integrated fashion across electricity generation,
transmission, distribution and consumption to achieve
an electric system that is clean, secure, reliable, efficient, and
sustainable [6]. The evolution of the SG heavily relies on the
utilization and integration of modern information technologies.
With the development of new applications and services that
can leverage the capability upgrades enabled by the advanced
information system, the grid will keep becoming “smarter.”
However, the overwhelming heterogenous information generated
in the SG due to widely deployed monitoring, metering,
measurement, and control devices calls for a powerful
and cost-effective information management paradigm for data
processing, analysis, and storage.
The Smart Grid Domain
First, CSSGIM can improve the level of integration and utilization
of information in the SG. In many cases, autonomous
business activities lead to “islands of information,” and as a
result the information in each department of electric utility
is not easily accessible by applications in other organizations
or departments [6]. However, ensuring that the information
is widely available, with privacy enforced, is critical to the
operations in the SG. If all or most of the information is stored
and managed by a service provider in the Cloud, we actually
have a fairly cost-effective way to integrate these islands of
information. Furthermore, a high level information integration
also provides potentials to increase the information utilization
level and improve the quality of decisions in operations.
Protection Policy
Ensuring information security, privacy, and quality of service
would be crucial to the CSSGIM. Information security
and privacy may be the biggest concern in outsourcing information
management to the Cloud [12]. Moreover, guaranteeing
quality of service is important for grid operations.
For example, failure to promptly diagnose the system failure
from the operational data may lead to serious problems or
even disastrous results [6]. We therefore propose a component
called Protection Policy Manager (PPM), which resides in
the SG domain but provides an interface between the actors
in the SG domain and the actors in the CC domain to
enforce security, privacy, quality of service, and other possible
information management protection requirements. In practice,
SG service providers can offer PPM as a service.
Recommending, Consulting and Advertising Service
The user energy usage data is full of user behavior information,
which can be mined to provide energy recommendations
or consultant advices for the users to help them reduce billing
or help the grid operate better. This information can also be
used to advertise appropriate energy saving appliances. From
the perspective of product sellers, this information can improve
the hit rate of advertising. An electric utility or a user can
use such recommending, consulting and advertising services
if they allow the CC service provider to access the user data
with privacy rules enforced and then ask the service provider
to deliver these services. This service can become smarter
if more information (probably provided by other parties,
such as location information providers and social network
service providers) is integrated, with privacy enforced.
CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
In this article, we have analyzed the benefits and opportunities
of using CC to help information management in the SG,
proposed a model to connect these two domains, and presented
four application scenarios. Although there is a great promise to
use CC to serve the information management in the SG, there
are still many issues needing to be further solved to help this
vision come true. For example, first it would be very important
to assess potential security and privacy issues. Second, our
model gets actors in the CC domain, the SG domain, and
the intermediate communication provider domain involved
and working together towards a common goal. Therefore, a
systematic study of this multi-domain resource optimization
problem is of great relevance not only for cost optimization,
but also many other relevant parameters.