Software Defined Networking Applied to the Heterogeneous Infrastructure of Smart Grid

The increased need for power quality monitoring and active control of distribution grid necessitates the introduction of the Smart Grid (SG) approach, requiring an efficient ICT system for the monitoring and control of distribution grid state. The main obstacle to deployment of SG in real system is the lack of an efficient communication infrastructure. The use a heterogeneous network, which employs various technologies, appears to be the most promising solution. Nevertheless, the management of these communication systems has proven to be hard and error prone. In this paper, a Software Defined Networking (SDN) approach has been proposed to manage SG communication system applied to grid monitoring/supervision. The preliminary feasibility analysis is promising, although a more detailed modeling and analysis of the system is needed due to the extreme heterogeneity of the network.