Implementing the smart grid: enterprise information integration
Some believe that the electric power system is in a process of a profound change. This change is driven by the convergence of information and power delivery technologies, and by the need for energy conservation and concerns regarding climate change. The changes are particularly significant for the electric distribution grid, where “blind” and manual operations, and electromechanical components of the previous century are being transformed into a “Smart Grid” by digital instruments, two-way communications, and automation.
Driving factors for smart grid
The key business drivers for the Smart Grid include:
Reliability and Quality of Supply: Our society is critically dependent on a reliable supply of electric power. The ageing infrastructure of our transmission and distribution networks threatens the security, reliability and quality of supply. Significant improvements in the reliability of power supply can be achieved through improved monitoring, automation and information management.
The Environment: Environmental issues have moved to the forefront of the utility business with concerns regarding the greenhouse gases and its impact on climate change. Many envision greater penetration of renewable resources closer to end-use consumption, and greater reliance on demand-side management and micro-grids.
Operational Excellence: Faced with the need to further improve operational efficiencies, utilities must deal with challenges associated with an aging workforce, and expectations for flexibility and improved services by regulators, customer and the market place. Utilities realize that they must shift their traditional business practices from a dependence on incumbent-based knowledge to systems-based knowledge through information management and automation.
The building blocks of smart grid – the SG ENABLING Stack
A “Smart Grid” vision is achieved through a holistic new view towards the end-to-end grid operation, bringing together digital sensors, communications, automation, information integration and changes in operational business processes. We call this Smart Grid Enabling stack.
Customers, demand-side energy automation and distributed generation technologies, e.g., photovoltaics, plug-in vehicles, and storage devices, from the base of the stack. These capabilities are supported by smart meters, intelligent monitoring, switching and control devices, and distribution automation. A utility-wide two-way data communications networks connects customers, distributed resources and smart devices with the enterprise systems and applications, enabling self-healing grid operation and demand/distributed resource management.
Enhancements to distribution grid design coupled with strategic monitoring and controls will support higher penetration of distributed resources.
Supporting the base layers is a myriad of information processing, analysis and software applications to provide the necessary intelligence and to support of various utility and customer facing operations of the Smart Grid (SG).
Information and systems integration enables coordinated decision making and operations, and enhances the overall operational efficiency and system reliability. These technology layers will be supported by appropriate organizational, people and process capabilities. These capabilities will be driven by and be supported by favorable regulatory policies and incentives.
A large scale Smart Grid initiative will impact many utility systems and processes from customer services to system operations, planning, engineering and field operations, and even power supply. A Smart Grid relies on systems and process integration and integrated information management across the operational enterprise. Timely and accurate data, and proper coordination and orchestration of information are essential for operation of Smart Grid.
Figure 3 provides a conceptual view of the typical applications and system components involved in support of a “smart” distribution grid operation.
Improved system reliability
Significant improvements in system reliability can be achieved trough a fully integrated outage management system bringing together trouble call, network connectivity and GIS information, AMI status and SCADA data. Use of last real-time gasp data from AMI meters, combined with distribution power flow analysis for switching plan can significantly reduce outage detection and service restoration times.
A utility’s outage management performance is typically measured by the System Average Irruption Duration Index (SAIDI) or Customer Minutes Lost (CML). Figure 4 illustrates a representative set of SAIDI values of for selected US and overseas utilities. A SAIDI benchmark value of 120-160 minutes may be typical for a US utility. European utilities typically have higher levels of distribution automation (DA) and thus the average system interruption duration, CML, in Western Europe is around 60-80 minutes. Some utilities in Asia, with significantly more DA, monitoring and controls operate with a CML target of 5 minutes. Some leading utilities in Asia, e.g., TEPCO, strive for a CML (SAIDI) of less than 5 minutes with extensive self-healing grid design and automation.
Large penetration of distributed & demand side resources
Today’s grid is designed for a vertically integrated supply model with centralized generation and distributed consumption, and primary objective of delivering energy from the transmission substation down to the end-users. Distribution networks tend to be radial with mostly unidirectional power flows and ”passive” operation.
Many believe over the next decade, a proportion of the centralized generation will be replaced by distributed and renewable energy sources, demand response and energy storage. The Smart Grid of the future will need to accommodate more intermittent and decentralized generation and support bi-directional power flows.
This will require significantly higher degree of automation to ensure supply reliability and power quality. Coordinated voltage and VAr control, automated switching, relay coordination and pervasive monitoring will be a necessity. The electricity grid will be interactive for both generation sources and power consumption sinks.
Operating a grid with substantial distributed resources, will require changes to the existing network operating practices. As illustrated in Figure 5, this will impact many of the information management functions involved with distribution management and automation, operations planning, scheduling and dispatch, market operations and, billing and settlements.
Asset management
Another important aspect of a Smart Grid is how the transmission and distribution assets are managed and maintained to ensure a high degree of system reliability while optimizing Operations & Maintenance activities. Coordinated asset management, equipment condition monitoring, condition-based inspection and maintenance, dynamic adjustment of operating limits and equipment rating based on their condition are among the strategies that a modern grid operation needs to employ. These strategies improve O&M efficiencies, extend equipment life and improve maintenance processes. This in turn results in enhanced system capacity and improved system reliability.
These require smart monitoring devices data collection and data transformation to actionable information. A broad-based deployment will require integration of data from SCADA, meter data management, diagnostic devices, GIS, Supply Chain (ERP/AM) applications, and coordination of those data with work management, mobile workforce, as well as EMS, DMS and OMS operations.
Enterprise level integration – data assets
Implementation of Smart Grid will require integration of processes and information across a multitude of systems and applications within utility system operations, planning and engineering and customer services.
Currently most utilities have limited enterprise level integration of their operational information systems. In most cases, this information in each organizational “silo” is not easily accessible by applications and users in other organizations. The Smart Grid strategy calls for enterprise-level integration of these islands of information. It is important to provide a single and consistent view of information throughout the organization.
There is an emerging trend to treat information as enterprise asset. These assets need to be properly managed, controlled and made available to different users and applications across the enterprise. For example, the network connectivity data in GIS are consumed for applications e.g., Outage Management System (OMS), mobile workforce (MWM), Customer Information System (CIS), systems planning and engineering, asset management, and SCADA. Figure 7 provides a conceptual view of the key utility operational data assets.
Data assets, like any other asset, need to be maintained. Some of the principles for data asset management include:
Data Stewardship – to define the data ownership and its Chain-of-Custody;
Data Organization – to adopt data modeling and semantic standards, and to define the System of Records (version of truth) for the enterprise data assets;
Data Content Management – to establish processes and responsibilities for data update, maintenance and quality management;
Data Access – establish methods, and tools for data access including data security and availability; and
Data Presentation – including visualization and data transformation, as well as business intelligence required to covert data to useful information.
Data management principles are complemented with systems integration techniques to enable Smart Grid capabilities. The information integration must support 1) real-time data, events, controls and process integration and 2) batch based exchange of bulk information. For example, the exchange of network connectivity models between GIS, DMS, OMS and planning applications can be considered as a bulk data transaction, where notification of an outage event require real-time.
There are many technical solutions for enterprise-level information integration, including various middleware products, web services and other technologies and tools for systems integration, especially under a service oriented architectures (SOA). A key industry challenge at this stage is the lack of broadly developed and supported reference models and standards for integration of field devices, smart meters, renewable resources with software applications integration, and applications interoperability in the distribution space.
Some of the existing industry standards efforts e.g., IEC TC57: IEC61850 for Substation Automation, IEC61968 for Distribution Management Systems – IEC61970 for Energy Management Systems and Common Information Model (CIM) provide some framework for this, but they are not fully adopted and supported across the industry. Other IEEE, ANSI and other regional and utility standards for network design, distributed generation interconnections, and operations also exist, but may present certain limitations when dealing with the broader Smart Grid requirements.
Roadmap for smart grid IMPLEMENTATION
Many utilities have initiated strategic plans for modernization of power delivery infrastructure and distribution operations. This is in part driven by the need for improved system reliability, concerns regarding available capacity and the emerging environmental issues. A roadmap for Smart Grid implementation should consider:
Strategic Planning - Smart Grid requires a coordinated phased implementation and roll-out plan spanning over several years covering design, implementation and change management.Regulatory Strategy – Strategies for cost recovery and regulatory alignment.
Holistic Approach – Smart grid requires a holistic approach to operations and business surrounding systems planning, power delivery and customer services. It requires a transformation away from a “Silo-Based” Business.
Business Case Justification – It requires a sound business case regarding costs and benefits associated with technologies and business transformation. Leveraging project synergies is a critical factor to the business case justification.
Enablers and Foundational Capabilities - Identification and implementation of enabling and foundational capabilities, including people and process, are critical to the long-term success of these initiatives.
Interoperability Standards – Establishing enterprise level governance, adopting interoperability standards and developing an architectural framework for data, systems and technology integration is an important step in implementation of Smart Grid initiatives.
Practical, Balanced and Leveraged Solutions – The need for business continuity and that leverage existing investments demands practical solutions that augment current capabilities and interoperate with existing systems and processes.
The future models for the Smart Grids have to meet changes in technology, and accommodate public values related to the environment and commerce. Thus security, reliability, safety, environment, power quality and cost of supply will all be examined in new ways and energy efficiency in the system will play an increasing role in balancing the system. The industry has already embarked on this journey the length of which will be determined in large part by how well all the players and decision makers understand the costs and benefits of modernization.
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