The objective of the technical committee is to support the IEEE Smart Grid activities, promote ComSoc’s position in the development and promotion of Smart Grid related technologies, and particularly, ensure that ComSoc members will play a decisive technological role in Smart Grid Communications. The transformation of the electricity grid into a smart grid is perhaps the most extensive and ambitious undertaking in electrical engineering of today. Information and communication technologies are the essential enablers of such a transformation. After communication technologies have revolutionized personal communications and turned wireless communications into a commodity, now they face a vast set of new challenges posed by the smart grid. In the context of electricity grid, communication systems need to be seen as part of a larger system of systems, including in particular energy, control, and information processing systems. The important performance requirements include: support for low-latency real-time communication, reliable communication with a massive number of sensor and actuators, grid security, tight interaction with computing and control, efficient support of the system and market operation through integration of heterogeneous elements.
The broad topics of interest include:
- Cyber-Physical Wide-Area Monitoring, Protection & Control (Cyber-Physical WAMPAC)
- The Whole Picture – Sense, Communicate, Compute, Control
- Smart Grid Cyber Security and Privacy
- Support for Storage, Renewable Resources and Micro-grids
- Demand Side Management, Demand Response, Dynamic Pricing
- Communications and Networks for Smart Grids and Smart Metering
- Smart Grid Services and Management Models
- Smart Grid Standards, Co-simulation, Test-beds, and Field Trials.
Short History:
The Technical Committee started as an Ad-Hoc Smart Grid Communications Committee in 2010, with Dr. Stefano Galli as a founder. In 2013 it has been renamed to Emerging Technical Subcommittee on Smart Grid Communications. In 2018 all Emerging Technical Subcommittees of ComSoc have been renamed to Emerging Technologies Initiatives (ETI). Since its inception, the initiative has helped with the organization of the IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Communications (SmartGridComm). In 2018, the ETI was elevated to be a technical committee.
Policies & Procedures:
The scope, policies and procedures of the work of the technical committee are outlined in the following document. The P&P document has been updated in October 2021 to comply with the IEEE ComSoc Technical Committees Board’s Policies & Procedures.
Policies and Procedures 2019 (previous outdated version).
Bi-Annual Report from Oct. 2016 to Sept. 2018:
The Bi-Annual Report describes the activities of the Emerging Technologies Initiative on Smart Grid Communications in the time frame from October 2016 to September 2018.
Detailed Scope and Future Technology Vision:
The ETI has issued in September 2018 a position paper which describes the scope and future technology vision for the technical committee and explains how the future committee work will contribute to its realization. The position paper has been presented at the IEEE Smart Grid Communications 2018 conference in Aalborg.