Smart Grid Reference Architecture, an Approach on a Secure and Model-Driven Implementation

Abstract

Up to date new devices for electrical power systems are introduced and used on every level. There is a myriad of documents related to those devices ranging from vendor requirements to checklists for the maintenance crew. This paper presents the results of creating an Austrian Reference Architecture for Smart Grids, not only being able to handle all these documents but also manage their versioning and automated security requirement list generation. Furthermore the architecture allows a role based focus on specific viewpoints as well as interoperability to third-party tools, for instance for external security evaluations. The main contribution of the project is the creation of the reference architecture on an available modeling framework plugin while keeping all stakeholders on board of the process to form a common understanding of its growing importance in the future. The exemplary steps of creating a reference architecture for Austria are introduced in this paper. These steps are internationally applicable and present a substantial move in this domain going from a document based procedure towards a model-based and digitized example resulting in a model-driven engineered implementation.