An IPv6 based hierarchical address configuration scheme for smart grid

Smart Grid (SG) is an intelligent and adaptive energy delivery network that combines the traditional power grid and IT communication network. It aims to provide more efficient, better fault-resilient and reliable energy support. Robust communication architecture is the key that differentiates Smart Grid from the traditional energy delivery system. IP enabled devices are necessary to build such network spread over a large geographic region and connecting devices starting from common household electrical appliances up to power generation units. With the huge number of devices including the smart electrical appliances, increasingly being used in homes, IPv6 become an obvious choice for Smart Grid for its bandwidth. However, one of the main challenges of connecting IPv6 with Smart Grid will be address configuration. In this paper, a new IPv6 address configuration schema for Smart Grid has been proposed. The proposed schema is consistent with the demands of large, dynamic, hierarchical smart grid network. The schema improves accessibility and scalability in terms of configuring a huge number of devices in the smart grid, thereby, fully extracting the potential of 128-bit IPv6 addressing mode.