Smart Grid Communication Infrastructures

8Big Data Analytics and Cloud Computing in the Smart Grid

The advanced communications infrastructure to be deployed in the smart grid is used for data exchange in many systems. Whether the smart grid can benefit from new and upgraded features, such as demand response and wide‐area monitoring system is closely related to issues of collection, storage, and processing of data. In this chapter, we will introduce big data analytics and cloud computing and discuss their relevance to the smart grid. More specifically, we will focus on relevant issues in demand response and wide‐area monitoring for illustration.

8.1 Background and Motivation

8.1.1 Big Data Era

Big data is a term for large and complex data sets that cannot be adequately processed with traditional data processing application software [129]. The concept of big data is widely defined as a set of ‘V’s:

• Volume. Big data indicates a massive volume of data that continues to grow larger.
• Velocity. Data comes in at unprecedented and possibly increasing speeds. Many data streams are generated in near real time.
• Variety. Data comes in all types of formats, structured and unstructured.
• Variability. The inconsistency of the data sets can hamper processes to handle and manage them.
• Veracity. Data quality varies greatly.

According to [130], the world's effective capacity to exchange information through telecommunication networks has increased from an annual volume of 281 petabytes in 1986 to an annual volume of 667 exabytes in 2014, as illustrated ...