The Introduction chapter begins with a general discussion of power line communications for smart grids and goes on to discuss the motivation for the book. A short paragraph is then given for each chapter, in order to provide an overview.

This Chapter presents the main forward error correction schemes found in the literature, including some modern techniques such as turbo and low density parity check, focusing on the coding techniques adopted by the main modern PLC standards.

Power line communication (PLC) technologies allow the transmission of data through the electrical cables employed in power transmission, distribution and consumption networks, or in any other electrified environment, taking advantage of these important existing branched and interconnected infrastructures to reduce the time and costs of deploying communication networks. PLCs have been used for a longtime, but only with recent advances in digital communication, signal processing and circuit design techniques have become sufficiently reliable and secure for applications in data networks and smart grids (SGs). PLC technologies have been designed for both narrowband and broadband applications and, as a result, several standards were developed to regulate their use. These standards specify several techniques to overcome the challenge of transmitting data through a medium (electrical cables) that was not originally designed for this purpose. Currently, PLCs are able to compete or complement wireless technologies in a variety of applications, presenting, under certain conditions, a number of advantages over them.

In this context, this chapter will first present an overview of the PHY layer of the PRIME, G3-PLC, IEEE 1901.2 standards, and then the results obtained from the performance simulations of PHY layer of these standards will be presented and discussed considering multipath fading channels with additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and impulsive noise. In the analysis conducted in this chapter, it was possible to conclude that both PRIME and G3-PLC presented good robustness against periodic impulsive noise even in very severe scenarios with Fimp = 10 and Fimp = 100. The degradation of the system performance caused by multipath propagation was much more critical than the one caused by the periodic impulsive noise (at the investigated levels). It is important to mention that in all scenarios investigated (AWGN and multipath fading channel without and with periodic impulsive noise) G3-PLC outperformed PRIME.

Smart grids (SGs) can be considered as an evolution of the current energy model to optimally manage the balance between power supply and demand and meet the energy needs of the modern world. One of the key elements of the SGs to achieve this goal is a bidirectional information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, with real-time monitoring, control and self-healing capability. Among potential telecommunications technologies, power line communications (PLCs) appear as a strong candidate to integrate this ICT infrastructure by having some interesting features for applications in SGs. For example, they can exploit the existing electric grid infrastructure to reduce deployment costs, provide a low-cost alternative to complement existing technologies in the search of ubiquitous coverage and establish high data rate communication through obstacles that typically degrade wireless communications. In order to understand the role of PLCs in SGs applications, this chapter will introduce a brief overview of how power grids are structured, then some fundamental characteristics of SGs will be shown and, finally, some possible applications of PLC technologies in SGs will be presented. Some of the key topics discussed here will be dealt with more deeply in next chapters.

This chapter provided an overview of DSM and especially, DR. In the past years, a wide range of DR programs have been developed in different power systems across the world. These programs aim at engaging all the types of consumers: from large industrial customers to residential end-users with relatively small electricity consumption, considering also special types of consumers such as the EV and data centers. The primary motive for developing DR programs is that by enabling the participation of the demand side in electricity markets significant benefits are anticipated: more efficient and sustainable system planning, enhancement of the operation of the distribution system, lower and more stable electricity prices in the long run, mitigation of the market power of several participants and promotion of competition, economic benefits for the consumers, and increased operational flexibility. Increased operational flexibility is directly linked to accommodating the handicaps of the trend that indicates that significant amount of variable RES generation will be introduced in power systems in the future.

The past few years have witnessed a tremendous development in powerline intelligent metering evolution (PRIME) technology for high speed data communication across medium voltage (MV) and low voltage (LV) transmission/distribution networks based smart grid (SG) applications. PRIME PLC (PRIME power-line communication) technology also elucidates the importance of employing robust modulation schemes across distribution-transformers and motivates research in this direction. Indeed, the aim of the chapter is to investigate PRIME channel measurements through MV/LV distribution transformers by implementing experimental tests to analyze the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), bit error rate (BER) and packet error rate (PER) performance of differential binary phase shift keying (DBPSK), differential quadrature phase shift keying (DQPSK) and eight-ary differential phase shift keying (D8PSK) modulation schemes over multipath PLC channels in Indian context.

This chapter proposes a control technique for a wind doubly fed induction generator (DFIG), based on direct torque control (DTC) with power references sent remotely via power line communication (PLC) technology. DTC achieves high dynamic performance, allowing independent control of DFIG electromagnetic torque and rotor flux magnitude. In this way, active and reactive power can be controlled by the voltage applied to the rotor independently. In order to operate in a smart grid (SG) environment, the proposed system employs PLC technology for transmitting the power references from the control center (CC) to the wind generator through power cables. The complete control system (controller and PLC), implemented in an experimental test bench, is presented in this chapter with results that validated the control strategy and the proposed system as a whole.