The Need for IPv6 based Smart Grid for India

Introduction

India, a unique and a developing country with huge population, provides many opportunities for Greenfield application deployments. One of such applications for India is the Smart Grid for the Electric Utilities. Smart Grid provides smooth and efficient delivery of electricity from suppliers to consumers using two-way digital communication technology to save energy, reduce cost and increase reliability. Smart Grid is being promoted by many governments across the world as a way of addressing the global warming and emergency resilience issues. This article provides the benefits of IPv6 based Smart Grid for India.

What is IPv6?

IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is the next generation protocol for the Internet, the successor to the IPv4. Internet is the most innovative, successful and massive network ever created. IPv6 has been designed to support Internet connectivity for electric switches to super computers. IPv6 suite of protocols help in building the next generation Internet called the Internet of Things wherein every possible devices, machines, appliances, humans and other things would be able to communicate over the Internet.

Why IPv6?

Everything-over-IPv6-over-Everything

IPv6 is a transport protocol for interconnecting heterogeneous physical links (IEEE 802.15.4, IEEE 802.11, Ethernet, WiMAX, Cellular Networks, etc), and can transfer any type of information (Voice, Multimedia, Data, Real-time information etc.). IPv6 can handle any data rates from few octets per day to Gigabits per second.

Unique and Uniform Addressing Mechanism

Everything from a switch to super computer can be addressed uniformly and uniquely with IPv6 while the DNS (Domain Name Service) provides an established human readable naming. This eliminates address and protocol translators/gateways for connecting to the Internet.

Simple Network Architecture

Every device talks IP - no protocols translators, no address translators, no information translators – yielding a simple All-IP Network – easy to operate and maintain, and low cost of ownership.

End-to-end Security

IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) has developed extensive security protocols for use with IP that provide end-t-end security across multiple heterogeneous interconnected administrative domains.

Existing Resources and Knowledge

Internet has been built for over 20 years and till date there huge number of tools and techniques that have developed and successfully deployed; reusing them for the Greenfield application makes the networks more robust. The amount of knowledge gained in building the Internet for the last few decades can be reused.

Today almost all telecom and enterprise networks are connected to Internet hence it is easy to hook everything to the internet even if the thing is located somewhere in a remote village.

IPv6 based Network Architecture for Smart Grid

A simple IPv6 based network architecture for Smart Grid consists of various sensors/relays that generate/consume information for control and management purpose, Mesh nodes that participate in routing, and Gateways that aggregate traffic and connect to Utility over the WAN (Wide Area Network). As shown in the following figure, every node implements IPv6 end-to-end and can be uniquely identified over the Internet. This architecture also provides end-to-end IP Security for complete protection from the network hackers.

Advantages of IPv6 based Solution

This architecture has many advantages apart from the typical advantages that IPv6 provides:

Subscription/Connectivity to WAN

This architecture provides aggregation of many household energy meters/Sensors/controllers (typically few hundred e.g. 500), the electric Utilities need connectivity subscription for one or two for a given location from the ISP. This saves recurring operational cost for the Utilities apart from low cost for the equipment.

Energy Consumption

Each sensor or end node needs to communicate to another device which is typically located at few meters to few hundred meters; the amount of energy consumed will be much lower compared to e.g. an energy meter directly connected to a cellular network. The later approach negates the purpose of Smart Grid i.e. to save energy consumption.

Seamless Web Services

The most successful application over the Internet is the Web; Internet architecture provides seamless integration of web services. Utilities adapting IPv6 will be able to innovate application development with abundant resources, tools, techniques and models available today. Also the applications can be developed independently of the transport network as the applications are not tied to the equipment and can be obtained from the open market.

Open Standards

All-IP Networks are based on true-open standards; utilities can mix and match the equipment from multiple vendors across world. Open standards also brings benefit of the low cost of ownership.

Smart Grid Evolution

The Smart Grid is going to evolve indefinitely and IPv6 based Smart Grid communications infrastructure helps rapid application innovation and delivery of new functionality that’s not possible or even thought of today.

Summary

Electric Utilities can implement Smart Grid infrastructure and services based on IPv6 with low cost of ownership. Implementation of IPv6 based networks for Greenfield applications is much easier and supports Smart Grid evolution for the foreseeable future needs. Hence, for Utilities adapting IPv6 as the base transport protocol is key for the future of the Smart Grid.