Sensor data output requirements for Smart Grid applications

The Smart Grid concept is conceived as a means to optimize and to improve the reliability of the electric delivery system. The numerous and different types of information generated at the remote sites at a distribution network by sensors and smart meters coupled with a communication infrastructure and data base management system provide the means to generate useful control algorithms. However, control applications lend themselves for logical stratifications unique to the intended targets of control. Demand response has a rippling effect all the way to generation and to some extend to distribution assets performance. Distribution automation could be local to distribution circuits served by a medium voltage distribution substation. Fast transient phenomena, harmonics problems can be highly local, limited to a particular feeder or at a customer premises. Hence the data requirements for each of the control applications mentioned before can be quite different from each other. This paper tries to illustrate how the physical behavior of the electric energy delivery system dictates the requirements for data generated by he sensing devices to design algorithms for Smart Grid control applications.