Integration of renewables, electrolyzers and storage into existing electricity grid infrastructure often requires improved and easy to deploy computation and communication capability.
Application of secure and deterministic communication enables quick aggregation and control of new and existing grid assets. Protection, control and data acquisition functionality can co-exist on the same communication fabric.
The fifth generation telecom standard (5G) enables new solutions as it offers improvements in speed (enhanced Mobile BroadBand - eMBB), determinism (Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication - URLLC), number of connected devices (massive Machine Type Communications - mMTC) and third party function virtualization (Multi-access Edge Computing - MEC).
With virtual protection, automation and control (vPAC), the network functions virtualization (NFV) and software defined networking (SDN) concepts from telecom are being applied to protection and control functionality in the power industry.
The application of standard data center equipment enables enhanced computation capabilities, reliable operations as well as facilitated maintenance. Furthermore, private telecom spectrum assignment and operator network slicing enables new architectures such as private 5G systems to be considered.
Technologies such as virtualization, time sensitive networking, OPC UA, IEC 61850 and Kafka can be applied to facilitate connection of renewables, electrolyzers and storage, realization of grid ancillary services, deployment of relay protection functions as well as connection of asset analytics and trading systems.
A 5G vPAC Virtual Hybrid Power Plant field project based on a private 5G system has been set up in Stockholm, Sweden to demonstrate the benefits of these concepts.
Results indicate that systems designs can be simplified, operations can be facilitated and cost savings can be realized.