Test Bench for Communication Protocols in Smart Grids

With rising global warming there has been more focus on using renewable energy to cut green house gasses emitted from burning fossil fuels. Due to the distributed nature of the renewable energy it is not possible to accommodate large quantities of renewable generators in out conventional electricity grid which supports only unidirectional flow of electricity. This forces us to redevelop the electricity grid into something called Smart Grids. Due to the distributed nature the smart grid field components are also distributed and communication is one of the major components in the smart grids. Due to lack of well accepted standards in this relatively new industry manufacturers use a proprietary communication protocol or form an alliance to create a standard. This would lead to compatibility issues when a heterogeneous mixture of components have to be installed in an ecosystem. With no inexpensive test tool which supports multiple protocols to test the compatibility it would be difficult to ensure inter-operability between these devices. In this book we propose a prototype for a communication protocol test bench which can be used to partially automate testing these components.