5G networks enabling new smart grid protection solutions

Abstract

Within the ongoing energy revolution, power distribution grid protection, control, and monitoring requires modern, advanced technologies to maintain safety and reliability of operation. If all devices could be interconnected through secure, reliable, and low latency communication infrastructure, a new dimension for design and operation of power distribution grids would be seen. Usually communication based protection and control schemes are built with wired communication technologies, which may be unavailable or difficult to arrange in retrofit scenarios. This paper introduces one of the most demanding communication-based protection principles - line differential protection including intertrip between circuit breakers, as a benchmark application for the evolved fifth generation (5G) wireless communication and an extensive test environment to validate its system and communication performance.