Smart Grid ICT infrastructure: New Zealand perspective

Abstract

In the transition of power system industry from traditional electricity grid towards Smart grid the distribution utilities are facing increased expectation from variety of stakeholders to support national energy efficiency and climate change policy targets. In this context, the leverage of ICT infrastructure in New Zealand is a vital requirement. The various pilot projects being implemented worldwide show that there are many smart grid communication solutions. To investigate leveraging of New Zealand ICT it is required that the advancement of the existing international Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to be fully understood. It is also required that a complete picture of the existing ICT practices and their applications used by the country distribution utilities to be presented and to be compared to the practices followed by the other countries. This may lead to development of new ICT applications for New Zealand emerging Smart Grid. This paper addresses the different technologies and opportunities of Smart Grid communications infrastructure used worldwide and the focus is mainly on the types of communication networks which are classified into premises, field area and wide area networks. Finally, the applied/planned communication technologies in New Zealand are compared with the practices followed by the rest of the world and consolidation of smart grid applications in terms of New Zealand perspective along with its best fit communication technology is addressed in the paper