Research shows why 5G and microgrids make a resilient match

According to research from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), 5G features have the capability to support distributed controls and configurable security and resilience of power systems.

This is according to the lab’s report, 5G Securely Energized and Resilient, where the US-based research laboratory details its findings after building a 5G research platform inside a replicated military microgrid, putting it through resilience scenarios and cyberattacks.

With resilience and energy management critical to NREL and DOD missions, NREL reported that the combination of 5G, distributed controls and a renewables-based microgrid is a powerful combination.

Specifically, NREL researchers achieved some of 5G’s effectiveness by designing the microgrid to maintain power to both communications and critical loads. This included a layer of resilience that was added by using edge controllers to maintain microgrid component operation, even if some communications were unavailable.

“From a grid integration standpoint, many devices will need low latency and high reliability to successfully coordinate,” said Tony Markel, an NREL senior researcher and project lead.

“A fundamental difference between 4G and 5G is the way the data moves; data resources can be closer to the edge. What if we harness the power of edge compute and reduced latency to make the grid components a more effective system?”

The test

To evaluate 5G in credible operating conditions, NREL modelled its microgrid to reflect a military base in California. Identical solar arrays, battery systems, vehicle chargers and protection equipment were modelled with interfaces via the 5G network.

“Our test scenarios were not only about controlling the power grid and microgrids for resilience but also about powering the 5G network itself. If we can keep the grid running for resilient power, that in turn keeps the communications network operational,” said Brian Miller, electric power systems engineering lead.

The scenarios included failure of a cell tower, a microgrid controller crash and recovery, unsecure foreign-operated network traffic and congestion from other network devices.

“Edge computing, network traffic prioritisation, and private slicing all worked out,” Miller said, discussing 5G features that were implemented in the test microgrid.

“We could operate flawlessly with this network; for example, prioritisation allowed us to pre-empt even when communication traffic was maxed out, so that it’s like having dedicated access to critical systems.”

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Latency, however, was less impressive, states the lab, claiming that perhaps with millimetre wave 5G bands the researchers would achieve significantly faster exchanges of data; the geographically dispersed microgrid, however, required the longer range of sub-6-GHz bands.

Latency was low, but not ultralow enough to smoothly coordinate power restoration without even a blip in power, as a battery backup unit would typically provide.

With regards to security, researchers focused on each 5G component and found many ways to make the network more secure against attackers with a foothold.

NREL states that because 5G is built on commodity server hardware and virtualised tools and functions, each component requires a thorough cyber assessment and tuning to prevent threat actors changing data or reading parameters of energy systems.

Knowing that the network components and data flows are secure is step one in being able to trust 5G for future uses with distributed assets.

NREL’s research was funded by the US Department of Defense (DOD) Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering as part of the FutureG programme.

“We plan to use this project as a development platform for research capabilities that can be replicated in the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) Cyber Range,” added Markel.

“The 5G core, multi-access edge compute, private slices—provides the foundation for research plans in large-scale secure integration of renewables.

“Industry led these efforts by planning a modular and open 5G architecture, and we are researching new ways to use its features in the electricity grid (…) Millions of energy devices will become interconnected, and our research is showing the path to distributed, resilient, secure and energy-efficient operations building on the 5G foundation.”