Ph.D.

Dissertation Proposal

Candidate: Chun-Hao (Thomas) Lo

Date: December 11th, 2012 (Tuesday)
Time: 2:00 PM
Room: ECEC 202
Title Enabling the Emerging Sustainable Power Distribution Networks by Using Smart Grid
Communications
Abstract: The explosive growth of data incurred by various application services ranging from peer-topeer, the Internet of Things, to machine-to-machine communications has been taken place in an
unprecedented scale. Moreover, an increase in greenhouse gas emissions and demands for electricity has
driven development of energy-efficient methodologies and algorithms for the respective networking
operations. Smart grid, the next-generation critical infrastructure of electric power systems, entails power
control and flow management integrated with information and communications capabilities for
coordinating distributed renewable energy source units and associated smart meters/devices in an energy
and communications efficient manner. The emerging grid is not only a system that supplies electricity to
end users, but is also designed to allow consumers to contribute their locally generated renewable energy
back to the grid in the future. In transition from a passive to an interactive system, immense data
collections and dissemination across the power-communications networks of smart grid are highly
anticipated and concerned by utilities and network operators in the electricity and telecommunications
markets. Therefore, this dissertation is motivated to investigate data traffic loads generated by smart
meters/devices in correspondence to power control management operated in the power distribution system.
An overview of the current power grid and future smart grid is first introduced, and the close relation
between power network and communications network is then described. By exploring the frontiers of
communications-power system integration in the development of smart grid, a foreseeable power
congestion problem in the future power distribution network is introduced. In particular, congestion
caused by power surpluses produced by households' rooftops photovoltaic/PV solar units is considered.
Disconnection of partial PV solar units is designed to maintain the reliability of the distribution grid
during the congestion and overload stage. A model for the disconnection process via smart metering
communications between smart meters and associated utility control center in a local neighborhood area
network is proposed. The congestion problem is formulated as a knapsack problem and solved by
heuristic algorithms in order to reduce the corresponding computation times and data traffic in the
network. The results have shown that the methodology achieves the formulated objectives. The future
work will look into the issue of bidirectional flows incurred by the PV solar power surpluses to cope with
the scalability of power control and communications operations under the conventional centralized power
network system.

Committee Members:
Dr. Nirwan Ansari, Professor, ECE Dept., NJIT (Advisor)
Dr. Sui-Hoi (Edwin) Hou, Associate Professor, ECE Dept., NJIT
Dr. Roberto Rojas-Cessa, Associate Professor, ECE Dept., NJIT
Dr. Ali Abdi, Associate Professor, ECE Dept., NJIT
Dr. Ali Mili, Professor, CS Dept., NJIT

Publications:
C-H Lo and N. Ansari, The Progressive Smart Grid System from Both Power and Communications
Aspects, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 799821, 2012.
C-H Lo and N. Ansari, Alleviating Solar Energy Congestion in the Distribution Grid via Smart Metering
Communications, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, vol. 23, no. 9, pp. 16071620,
2012.
C-H Lo and N. Ansari, Decentralized Controls and Communications for Autonomous Distribution
Networks in Smart Grid, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, accepted.
C-H Lo and N. Ansari, IEEE 802.15.4 Based Wireless Sensor Network Design for Smart Grid
Communications, Handbook of Green Information and Communication Systems, M. S. Obaidat, A.
Anpalagan and I. Woungang, Eds. Elsevier, 2012, ch. 4, pp. 91114.