Communication in the Smart Grid

In industrial communication, OPC UA simplifies the exchange of data between machines and devices and enables a high level of data exchange between manufacturers and platforms.

Therefore researcher Armin Veichtlbauer and ITS Masterstudent Martin Ortmayer examined how the communication protocol is suitable for exchanging data between field devices and with back-end solutions in the OpenNES project. The aim was also to evaluate whether a deployment as a middleware solution for an open and interoperable communication infrastructure is possible for the smart grid.

Armin Veichtlbauer recently presented the results of these investigations at INDIN 2017, the “IEEE 15th International Conference of Industrial Informatics”.
Based on a prototype it was show that the integration of OPC UA in field devices is possible. The integration was evaluated according to criteria such as the size of the storage requirement, the CPU load and the delay in communication. The researcher could prove that OPC UA can be used sensibly for the communication of field devices. Their study also provides an estimate of the costs in terms of time and storage requirements for a selected platform.

Further details can be found in the publication:

  • [PDF] A. Veichtlbauer, M. Ortmayer, and T. Heistracher, “OPC UA Integration for Field Devices,” in Proceedings of the IEEE 15th International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN 2017), Emden, Germany, 2017.
    [Bibtex]
    @InProceedings{Veichtlbauer17a,
    author = {Armin Veichtlbauer and Martin Ortmayer and Thomas Heistracher},
    title = {{OPC UA Integration for Field Devices}},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the IEEE 15th International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN 2017)},
    year = {2017},
    address = {Emden, Germany},
    month = jul,
    pdf = {http://www.en-trust.at/papers/Veichtlbauer17a.pdf},
    }