Standardizing energy management by using simple network management protocol

The evolution within the area of management of telecommunications networks has developed rapidly. Management functions and interfaces have been standardized by standardization bodies. However, most of that work has been towards management of the transmission and switching network element. The development of energy network elements does still lack when it concerns functions and interfaces. It is costly to implement Q3 interfaces and adapters for the energy equipment mostly due to the complex hierarchy of the CMIP protocol stack. As the telecommunication network and computer networks tend to grow together a “new” interface has been discovered, the SNMP interface. This paper deals with the functional and implementation aspects of using the SNMP interface for management of energy networks. The details in this paper cover: the system architecture of an SNMP based energy management system; management functions by using SNMP interfaces; the modelling of a management information base for an energy network; and SNMP versus CMIP