Data Reduction for an ICT Network in the Smart Grid

Intelligent electrical networks called Smart Grids incorporate information and communication technology (ICT) to service the power grid. In this paper we discuss about our proposed ICT architecture at the level of the electrical network where monitoring and control has not previously been deployed. We describe an actual project that is being implemented on the medium voltage power network of the University of Manchester, that will offer more intelligence to the current grid. Energy constraints are one of the major limitations of the ICT in the Smart Grid, especially where wireless networking is proposed. The main contribution of this paper is that we propose a data reduction algorithm suitable for Smart Grid applications which significantly improves the energy efficiency of the communication network by minimizing the communication energy cost and optimizing the network resource consumption while maintaining the integrity and quality of data.