Power and Energy Engineering

Traditional power system architecture has enabled, for more than a century, a reliable, stable and efficient grid operation. However the rise of distributed generation and the usage of the volatile energy resources like wind and photo voltaic have created big operation challenges on all parts of grids: i.e. in distribution as well as in transmission. The coordinated operation of the transmission and distribution grid has now become more and more difficult. LINK-based architecture is a new technical-functional architecture that overcomes challenges, which are induced by the integration of the distributed generation. This new architecture is derived from the “Energy Supply Chain Net” holistic model of power systems and the LINK-Paradigm. Having a standardized structure, LINKParadigm can be applied to any partition of power system: Electricity production entity, storage entity, grid or even the customer plant. From this paradigm are drived three architecture components: The “Grid-Link”, the “Producer-Link” and the “Storage-Link”. Each of them has its own operator Grid- or system operator, producer operator and storage operator respectively. The distributed LINK-based architecture is designed on the basis of these three components. The new architecture allows a flat business structure across the electrical industry, which facilitates a holistic power market model. It minimizes the amount of the data, which needs to be exchanged. The interfaces between the all three architecture components are well defined. The minimum of exchanged data are extracted from power system operation processes. The LINK-based architecture is in compliance with high requirements of data privacy and narrows cyber attaks down.