Abstract:
The transition from traditional to smart grids and increasing complexity requires advanced communication frameworks to ensure reliable and efficient distribution automation (DA). Considering its capabilities to decouple the control plane from the data plane, the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technology has emerged as a promising approach to address stringent requirements of smart grid communications, offering enhanced control, flexibility, robustness, and programmable network management. This thesis focuses on the integration of SDN into distribution automation systems, aiming to enhance the reliability and performance of communication networks within smart grids to ensure reliable communication between different components and devices of the grids by minimizing latency, enhancing fault tolerance, and optimizing resource allocation. The study reviewed challenges and issues in communication existing systems used in traditional grids such as lack of flexibility, latency, and bandwidth utilisation, and the study presented an SDN-based architecture tailored for smart grid applications, leveraging the centralized control and dynamic configuration capabilities of SDN to mitigate these issues. Through a combination of simulation-based analysis, it demonstrates how SDN can be leveraged to dynamically adjust communication paths in response to network failures, thereby maintaining consistent and reliable data exchange between distribution automation elements and devices. A comprehensive evaluation of the proposed solution has been performed in a simulation environment developed using Mininet and NS-3 simulation tools, emulating near real-world situations to analyze the key metrics revealing substantial improvements in network performance compared to traditional communication setups. The results and findings have indicated that the SDN-based platform can significantly increase the reliability and efficiency in communication, thus highlighting the paramount potential of SDN to support high demanding requirements of distribution automation in modern grids. However, the proposed solution provides a good foundation for further research of SDN's potential in developing the capabilities of next-generation power distribution systems.
