Abstract

Smart grid (SG) demand response (DR) programs and their management attain higher importance as distributed energy generation becomes more popular in households due to reducing prices of small-scale renewable energy generation equipment. The use of public telecommunications infrastructure is a good candidate for enabling DR communications over SGs, but the LTE networks become excessively congested during peak hours and the SG DR traffic delivery can be degraded. The network simulations evaluate traffic volumes, delivery ratios, and delays of various traffic types, including SG DR communications, when an LTE macrocell network capacity is exceeded by an increased amount of typical traffic types (Skype video call, FTP, Yotube video stream, and HTTP). The results show that the SG DR traffic can be delivered, maintaining satisfactory communications performance also in a highly loaded network conditions. The QoS class of SG DR traffic transmitted in downlink direction can even be considered to be lowered below the QoS of typical traffic types.