Smart5Grid - Real Time Wide Area Monitoring

Real-time Wide Area Monitoring (Use Case #4)

The focus of UC4 is the real-time monitoring of a geographical area where cross-border power exchanges take place. This particular use case falls under the domain of energy reliability within the broader energy sector. Specifically, UC4 concentrates on monitoring the interconnection power flow between Greece and Bulgaria, capitalising on the benefits provided by Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) and the 5G telecommunication infrastructure.

By integrating time-stamped, synchronised PMU measurements with high data granularity (50 to 60 times per second), conducting a comprehensive analysis of voltage and current phasors in their positive, negative, and zero sequences becomes possible. To facilitate the data collection process of the UC, a virtual Phasor Data Concentrator (vPDC) has been developed.

The 5G Advantage

The adoption of 5G technology in this use case allows for the virtualization of the PDC component, that is deployed in specialised hardware in legacy solutions. It also provides low latency and high-reliability communication between PMUs and the vPDC, which consists of a vital objective due to the critical nature of the use case. Additionally, the Network Application designed in the context of this UC covers three key services: the vPDC Service, the Wide Area Monitoring (WAM) Service, and the Advisory Service.

Network Application

The Network Application is the cornerstone of the UC. It offers the data concentrator mechanism by aggregating, synchronising and storing the PMU data, along with enhanced visualisation tools. It also processes the stored data to extract patterns and provide useful insights to the TSOs. The UC4 Network Application is fully operational, with final adjustments and fine-tuning being in progress

Key Achievements

• 5G radio deployment at the last mile of the transmission system.
• Implementation of two network scenarios (roaming & private APN)
• Direct communication between the vPDC and the PMUs of two different TSOs.
• Virtualization of a service previously deployed on specialised hardware.
• Break of the PDC hierarchical schema, forwarding the PMU data to a series of intermediate PDCs before making them available to a common data space.

Current Status

The status of the UC is as follows: the PMUs are in place, seamlessly sending measurements through the 5G networks of Greece and Bulgaria to the edge-cloud server, metering probes are deployed in key points of the network in order to monitor its performance and health indexes, while the Network Application is running in parallel.