PROJECT TITLE :

Streetlights Are Getting Smarter: Integrating an Intelligent Communications and Control System to the Current Infrastructure

ABSTRACT:

While there are many solutions to existing issues with power distribution, an emerging solution that's gaining traction with utilities and customers is that the smart grid. Adding communications to existing grid infrastructure and increasing the potential of grid devices, to manage changing things that have an effect on the grid, greatly increases the potential of our aging electrical infrastructure. Unfortunately, these increases don't seem to be while not setbacks as additional network infrastructure can boost the vulnerability of an aging grid and be inclined to storms and different events. The center for Smart Grid Applications Research and Technology(CSMART) at the Illinois Institute of Technology(IIT) has installed the first networked light-weight-emitting diode (LED) streetlights in town of Chicago to boost the reliability and economics of its main campus, 2.five mi south of downtown Chicago. Analysis shows that these networked LED streetlights greatly cut back a town's rising energy costs, but the CSMART project team has got down to prove the advantages of integrating an intelligent communications and management system with an existing good grid infrastructure, like an existing network and supervisory control and information acquisition (SCADA) systems. As well as assessing the economic and environmental drivers for the intelligent streetlight resolution, the project team is dedicated to assessing the potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities of such a system and operating to mitigate or eliminate them. We have a tendency to believe that the advantages of integration with the present infrastructure during a secure manner can bring customers and utilities into a brighter and safer future, and we have a tendency to obtain to maximise the adoption of such a system by improving reliability, resilience, and economics through our research and applications on intelligent streetlights in IIT's microgrid.