Abstract: - For century, there has been no change in thefundamental structure of the electrical power grid and vehicle networks.Current hierarchical, centrally controlled grid of the electrical grid is notbest for growing demand. To address the challenges of the existing power grid,the new concept of smart grid and smarter planet are under research. The smartgrid can be considered as a modern electric power grid infrastructure forenhanced efficiency and reliability through automated control, high-powerconverters, modern communications infrastructure, sensing and meteringtechnologies, and modern energy management techniques based on the optimizationof on demand, energy and network availability. While current power systems arebased on a solid information and communication infrastructure, the new smartgrid needs a different and much more complex one, as its dimension is muchlarger and needs utmost performance. This paper addresses critical issues onsmart grid technologies primarily in terms of information and communicationtechnology (ICT) issues and opportunities. The main objective of this paper isto provide a contemporary look at the current state of the art in smart gridcommunications as well as to discuss the still-open research issues in thisfield.
Keywords: - Smart grid, power grid, energy, information, communications, management,protection, security, privacy.