Multicast Communication for Demand Response in Smart Grid

Smart Grid-The intelligent electricity grid empowers bi-directional communication between utility and its consumers. Unlike traditional grid, smart grid encourages consumers to participate in demand response program. Demand Response program allows the consumers to reduce or shift the energy usage from peak to offpeak period. This potentially offers energy efficiency. In this paper, we have proposed multicast communication for demand response messages using 3GPP LTE to reduce the power consumption. During peak energy consumption period, utility centers multicast a demand-response message to a group of residential users. The multicast message prompts the users to reduce their power usage to enforce energy efficiency. Because of limited resources, multicast is the most significant work to advertise messages to a group of smart grid users to reduce network traffic. Our model strives for green environment by reducing network traffic level and power consumption of users. We have simulated our proposed model in OMNET++ simulator using SimuLTE module. For power shortage of 20%, our protocol decreases round trip time up to 56.94% by using our multicast group with 40 users compared to 100 users. Smart Grids; Demand Response; Residential Demand Response program; Energy Efficiency; Multicast; 4G LTE networks; OMNET++. Introduction Smart Grid (SG) is a new paradigm of the existing traditional electric grid. It is capable of monitoring all domains from generation plants to consumer’s individual appliances [1]. SG provides Table 1: DR Communication Needs Application Bandwidth Latency Demand Response 14Kbps 100Kbps per node/device 500ms several minutes the flexibility for users to participate in its operation. A primary key feature of SG is Smart meter (SM). SM enables bi-directional communication between utility and user. SM delivers the power consumption data of users to utility center. The utility center updates real-time electricity prices to end users through SM [2]. This information allows the users to react to price changes by reducing power usage, thereby participating in demand response programs. Demand Response (DR) is one of the key functionality of the SG that allows the consumers to reduce