Adding communications to existing grid infrastructure and increasing the capability of grid devices greatly increases the capability of our aging electrical infrastructure.
The Center for Smart Grid Applications Research and Technology (CSMART) at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) has installed the first networked lightemitting diode (LED) streetlights in the city of Chicago to improve the reliability and economics of its main campus, 2.5 mi south of downtown Chicago. Research shows that these networked LED streetlights greatly reduce a city’s rising energy costs, but the CSMART project team has set out to prove the benefits of integrating an intelligent communications and control system with an existing smart grid infrastructure, such as an existing network and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. In addition to assessing the economic and environmental drivers for the intelligent streetlight solution, the project team is dedicated to assessing the potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities of such a system and working to mitigate or eliminate them.
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