Edge layer design and optimization for smart grids

The emergence of modern monitoring, communication, computation, and control equipment into power systems has made them evolve into smart grids that can be thought of as the electric grid of things. This evolution has enhanced the efficiency of the power systems through the availability of a large volume of system data that can help with system functions nevertheless, it has intensified the communication and computation burden on these systems. While many such computations were traditionally deployed in central servers, new technologies such as edge computing can provide unique opportunities to address some of the computational challenges and improve the responsiveness of the system by processing data locally. In this paper, an edge enabled smart grid architecture is presented. The edge layer for the smart grid is designed through various optimization formulations to identify the placement of edge servers and their connectivity structure to the Phasor Measurement Units in the system. Various factors affecting the design, such as the geographical and resource constraints as well as the communication technology considerations have been incorporated in the formulations and evaluated using the IEEE 118 bus system.