Virtual Energy Information Network: a resilience perspective

Increasing demand in energy consumption, missed modernisations, and the increasing difficulties in predicting power production due to volatile renewable energy sources (e.g., based on wind or sun) impose major challenges to the power grid. Power supply and power demand are closely interconnected with the need to maintain the power grid in a stable state with a sufficient quality of power. This requires energy-relevant information to be exchanged through the so called Energy Information Network. Communication, however, is challenging within the Energy Information Network due to privacy, security, resiliency, and quality-of-service requirements. Particularly, the resilience of communication within the Energy Information Network needs to be considered to maintain the power grid in a stable and controlled state. This paper suggests a Virtualised Energy Information Network (VEIN), where the Energy Information Network is divided into multiple virtual networks that run over a common substrate network. Furthermore, this paper discusses benefits of this approach in terms of privacy, security, and resilience and points out open research questions.