Guest Editorial: Smart Grid Communications

IN THIS SECOND edition of the IEEE JSAC Smart Grid series, we continue to explore advances in communication technologies that have the potential for improving energy efficiency and realizing the smart grid vision. We have received a total number of 73 papers, and after a thorough review and careful deliberations, we have accepted 15 articles. This issue tackles important challenges with respect to smart grid communications, such as interference mitigation in powerline communications, information exchange for wide area management systems, energy service interface deployment, load balancing, energy pricing, security, and privacy. In “Impulsive Noise Mitigation in Powerline Communications Using Sparse Bayesian Learning,” J. Lin, M. Nassar, B. L. Evans consider the use of narrowband power line communications (PLC) in the distribution part of a smart electricity grid. The authors present a suite of noise mitigation methods and discuss their effectiveness based on simulation results. “Robust Decentralized State Estimation and Tracking for Power Systems via Network Gossiping,” X. Li and A. Scaglione, proposes a distributed and adaptive state estimation scheme for power systems based on message passing, using hybrid measurements from the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system and Wide-Area Measurement System (WAMS). In “Energy Service Interface: Accessing to Customer Energy Resources for Smart Grid Interoperation,” E. K. Lee, R. Gadh, and M. Gerla, focus on the building and deployment of two Energy Service Interface (ESI) testbeds, addressing fundamental functional requirements. In “nPlug: An Autonomous Peak Load Controller,” T. Ganu, D. P. Seetharam, V. Arya, J. Hazra, D. Sinha, R. Kunnath, L. C. De Silva, S. A. Husain, and S. Kalyanaraman discuss the design, implementation and performance of a device, n-Plug, that can be used to turn off deferrable energy loads during peak usage. In “Bidirectional Energy Trading and Residential Load Scheduling with Electric Vehicles in the Smart Grid,” B.-G. Kim, S. Ren, M. van der Schaar, and J.-W. Lee, investigate distributed and game-theoretic approaches for load scheduling that jointly considers appliances and EV energy trading.