The Impact of Communication Technologies on the Smart Grid

The traditional power grid is considered no longer viable because it is old, overstretched, unreliable hence the reason for the transformation into the smart grid (SG). The Future SG will have monitoring, automation and communication capabilities which is the main focus of this paper. The SG can also provide two-way communication, real-time pricing and demand-side management. It will have self-healing capability in the case of any fault in the system, unlike the conventional power grid. Furthermore, the SG will have renewable energy resources (RER), advanced metering infrastructure(AMI), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) as the essential blocks of SG. The reliability of the SG can be guaranteed by intelligent monitoring and control system with robust information and communication technology. This paper provides a survey of the SG system, a basic overview of the SG, a summary of the various types of communication technologies that can be used in the SG, the requirements for smart grid communication in other to have an effective and efficient communication system and finally, the future trends of SG communication.