Research on Dependable Distributed Systems for Smart Grid

Within the last few years, smart grid has been one of major trends in the electric power industry and has gained popularity in electric utilities, research institutes and communication companies. As applications for smart grid become more distributed and complex, the probability of faults undoubtedly increases. This fact has motivated to construct dependable distributed systems for smart grid. However, dependable distributed systems are difficult to build. They present challenging problems to system designers. In this paper, we first examine the question of dependability and identify major challenges during the construction of dependable systems. Next, we attempt to present a view on the fault tolerance techniques for dependable distributed systems. As part of this view, we present the distributed tolerance techniques for the construction of dependable distributed applications in smart grid. Subsequently, we propose a systematic solution based on the middleware that supports dependable distributed systems for smart grid and study the combination of reflection and dependable middleware. Finally, we draw our conclusions and points out the future directions of research.