Data aggregate point placement for smart grid with joint consideration of communication and power networks

Data aggregate point (DAP) placement is one of the great challenges in implementing smart grid. The placement problem involves determining the optimal number and locations of DAPs, while maintaining a desired level of quality for each communication link that connects a smart meter to its associated DAP. Having smart meters on different feeders in the power network, connecting to the same DAP in the communication network may lead to inefficient data aggregation. Therefore, the placement problem must not consider the communication network in isolation from the power network. In this paper, a DAP placement scheme is proposed to jointly consider the topologies of both power and communication networks, in achieving a higher communication efficiency, and fulfilling a desired level of transmission reliability. In the proposed scheme, a mixed-integer non-linear optimization is formulated to determine the number and locations of DAPs that would reduce the delay in the network, so that the amount of data traffic and the system cost are minimized. Numerical results show that having the number of DAPs equals to the number of feeders is the optimal one. In addition, it is concluded that having less number of feeders and lower data arrival rate would lead to a smaller delay.