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Southern California Edison Uses Dedicated AMI Team to Drive Increased Benefits
By Ron Chebra
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SCE program manager explains utility's innovative AMI approach
When faced with a major purchase, frequently buyers will go through various levels of compromise, weighing factors such as costs, features and availability as they make a decision. Rarely can one find that "perfect home," "ideal car" or suit that fits you like a glove. Normally, there is some level of give and take to achieve the best fit.
As many utilities aggressively pursue Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) solutions, often the same balancing of these factors, forces decision-makers to settle for what the vendors have to offer. While there are advantages of seeking a vendor’s standard offering, sometimes this option may mean setting aside some of the most desirable functionalities and these may be the very ones that could yield the greatest benefits.
Sometimes utilities may ask vendors if they can accelerate some of the advanced product features that are "in the works" or develop a custom solution. However, in the evaluation of this option, either the delays associated with this level of innovation or the costs of unique products are risks that may be too great for many utilities.
However, Southern California Edison (SCE) has taken a novel approach. Rather than accepting what vendors have to offer, they have fostered an open process that encourages the vendors to align their innovation with SCE’s specific requirements.
Likewise, for many years, utilities have been seeking the holy grail of interoperability for AMR/AMI. The desired goal of ultimate flexibility has a vision of a utility being able to buy meters from any variety of providers, coupling these with communications products from another set of providers, and having them seamlessly exchange information with another set of back office systems.
In today’s "plug and play" world of computing and communications, there are many examples of this seamless integration. Many computer PCI cards are automatically recognized by the operating system when they plugged in, and are ready for use in seconds, often with little or no difficulty. Even 802.11 b/g WiFi systems allow users to log on without customized modems, enabling a user to work at home, in the hotel or at their favorite corner coffee shop hot spot.
Since some of the AMR/AMI systems in the marketplace now pre-date the development of WiFi, why then is this industry still lagging behind others when it comes to reaching a suitable level of flexibility? More importantly, what are utilities doing today to drive this interoperability?
Driving vendor innovation
Again, SCE is among a core group of utility champions fostering an interoperative initiative. So why has SCE elected to buck the tide of compromise by guiding vendors to what they need, and to specify a level of compatibility among suppliers?
In addition to seeking to meet these goals for SCE, they have been an advocate and major supporter of industry-wide groups, such as OpenAMI, and UtilityAMI. By leveraging the common interests of other utilities, and the growing desire of vendors to meet these needs, these forums have helped codify many of the emerging requirements that set the pace for the expanding AMI market.
"One of the most critical aspects of the SCE approach is the total engagement of a focused team," De Martini says. "Too often, I have seen a utility add the AMI evaluation effort as another task to an already overburdened staff. This approach can create a situation where the best alternative is to limit the desired feature requirements to only what is available today. It takes a significant amount of time to work with vendors and to understand where they are with their product development plans. This level and intensity cannot be done if AMI is not your full-time job."
For instance, one of the key features that SCE has stipulated for their AMI endpoint deployment is a service disconnect/reconnect latching relay for each unit. While many utilities have considered this feature only as an option for a surgical implementation, SCE has mandated this feature system-wide because of an economic model that demonstrates the viability when applied universally.
"Had we not been able to have our team explore the options, question vendors and suppliers, gain insights into the volume/price curve of these relays and become well informed on the subject, we would have little recourse but to rely on the vendor’s best effort," De Martini says. "While our goal was not to design the ‘smart meter,’ we wanted to be very smart about what the meter could do and what the price points of these features would be."
Vendor interoperability
When it comes to the issue of interoperability, SCE’s goal is a 3 by 3 matrix of providers, in which any of the three meter vendors interface seamlessly with any three communications providers. While field interoperability is still somewhat of a challenge, mostly because of the various media types that can be used for AMI, and the respective constraints that are in place for bandwidth and protocols, the information exchange at the content/application layer is mandatory.
"It may be impossible to expect that a single meter and communications pair may be a universal set that is suitable for RF, powerline or other local area networking," De Martini says. "However it is critical that various meters can connect to the most appropriate LAN. Further, once the data is acquired it is mandatory that the meter data flow seamlessly in the back office, regardless of how it got there."
So is SCE setting the pace for other utilities?
The approach taken by SCE with their AMI program will be a case study in innovation and planning. It is not a question of will they succeed, but rather of how it may become a template for achieving what is needed when a focused team takes the driver’s seat.
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