Abstract: “In the context of a “Smart Grid” research project, together with industrial partners, the OTH-Regensburg realized an intelligent medium-voltage grid in the local area. Goal was to improve the current voltage regulation and to counter the problems with inconsistent energy feed-in of decentralized renewable energy producers. In this paper we discuss the possibilities of using 3rd generation (3G) cellular networks (UMTS) as basic technology to communicate the voltage-levels within a medium-voltage grid. We build an experimental hardware setup to generate data-traffic as specified for the smart grid. By analyzing the performance of 3G cellular networks in terms of transmission latency and rate of failure, we tried to evaluate the usability of this technology for such critical data exchange. Though mobile communication in its structure is not specified for the use of transmitting such infrastructure critical data, the results show a promising high reliability with low transmission latency.”

Keywords: mobile radio, cellular data transmission, 3G, 4G, Smart Grid, communication (key words)