Towards a Security Enabled and SOA-based QoS (for the Smart Grid) Architecture

QoS and Security features are playing an important role in modern network architecures. Dynamic selection of services and by extension of service providers are vital in today’s liberalized market of energy. On the other hand it is equally important for Service Providers to spot the one QoS Module that offers the best QoS level in a given cost. Type of service, response time, availability and cost, consist a basic set of attributes that should be taken into consideration when building a concrete Grid network. In the proposed QoS architecture Prosumers request services based on the aforementioned set of attributes. The Prosumer requests the service through the QoS Module. It is then the QoS Module that seeks the Service Provider that best fits the needs of the client. The aforementioned approach is well supplemented with an in depth analysis on existing authentication and authorization protocols. The authors believe that QoS and security can work in parallel without adding extra burden in the Smart Grid infrastructure. This is feasible by building an in advance system for placing, scheduling, and assigning of the requests for energy consumption or production, thus decongesting the traffic in the whole network.