Cloud-Based Information Infrastructure for Next-Generation Power Grid: Conception, Architecture, and Applications

This paper gives a comprehensive discussion on applying the cloud computing technology as the new information infrastructure for the next-generation power system. First, this paper analyzes the main requirements of the future power grid on the information infrastructure and the limitations of the current information infrastructure. Based on this, a layered cloud-based information infrastructure model for next-generation power grid is proposed. Thus, this paper discussed how different categories of the power applications can benefit from the cloud-based information infrastructure. For the demonstration purpose, this paper develops three specific cloud-enabled power applications. The first two applications demonstrate how to develop practical compute-intensive and data-intensive power applications by utilizing different layered services provided by the state-of-the-art public cloud computing platforms. In the third application, we propose a cloud-based collaborative direct load control framework in a smart grid and show the merits of the cloud-based information infrastructure on it. Some cybersecurity considerations and the challenges and limitations of the cloud-based information infrastructure are also discussed.