EnerNex is committed to deploying a core multi-vendor based infrastructure of power systems equipment, supporting communications equipment, enterprise and diagnostic software as a platform for researching and evaluating hardware and software in end-to-end, real world application-based scenarios.  This platform is used to support research, engineering and consulting services performed for utilities, vendors, and other stakeholders for product development, product refinement, vendor qualification, pre-certification, and education.

The EnerNex staff have been furiously completing the build-out of the Smart Grid Labs (SGL) infrastructure. This infrastructure will support our six operational domains:

• Security
• Grid
• Metering
• Consumer
• Communications
• Command and Control

The infrastructure is composed of a power system circuit with actual poles (shorter than usual!) and field equipment such as capacitor bank controllers and relays. There is a substation server rack that contains the networking and command and control equipment typically in use at a utility. This rack is the eventual home of our simulation servers and distribution management system (DMS) software. Enterprise applications such as meter data management systems, data historians, and the like are part of a separate server rack, allowing the staff to operate this in a manner similar to many utilities. EnerNex has installed metering on their actual infrastructure for the lighting and loads in the lab, as well as for their photovoltaic (PV, or solar cell) array and electric vehicle service equipment (EVSE, or charging station), facilitating long term analysis of PV and EVSE operations. The PV installation contributes to the “greening” of the EnerNex Water’s Edge office campus complex and the EVSE installation to the local reduction of tailpipe emissions. In addition to the “EnerNex meters”, there is accommodation for quite a few (tens) of meters on a portable testing appliance. The lab contains a typical consumer utility room with two electric water heater connections, a clothes washer and a clothes dryer. There is a refrigerator connection in the consumer kitchen, which leads to the living room, both of which (in addition to the utility room) may be part of any home area network (HAN).

Overlaying all of the infrastructure is a commitment to security, both physical and cyber. The EnerNex security team has designed the cyber security to fit industry best practices as well as from our in-depth knowledge of what is needed beyond those practices. On the physical side, we have committed to practicing role-based access control, also in line with the industry. The security architecture will allow EnerNex staff to leverage the infrastructure in a manner that protects client confidentiality, our parallel corporate network, and our permanent and project equipment while offering on-site and virtual visitors the opportunity to “plug in” at the appropriate point and collaborate.

Click here to register for this exciting event!

It is well established through many examples that fear, uncertainty, doubt (FUD) and ignorance has a real cost in terms of time, money, relationships, and other aspects of everyday life.  One great example that society dealt with for years was the idea that using seat belts would cause you greater injury than not using them. Thousands of people died during the period that this FUD was being spread. While the current FUD on smart metering does not rise to this level, it is based on the same kind of “scientific” foundation as the seat belt myths. The recent compromise decision by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) regarding PG&E’s opt out program establishes a very specific cost for Smart Meter FUD – $75 up front and $10 a month.

The good news about this decision is that it puts the direct cost of FUD and ignorance directly on those who could otherwise mitigate it.  They have the option to learn and overcome their FUD at any time.  It still seems unfortunate that some will spend more time, money and energy complaining about a situation they don’t understand rather than taking the time to learn about it from authoritative sources.  This is the same kind of enforcement that seat belt laws and tickets were enacted to address.

We can’t just blame those who are expressing Smart Meter FUD however.  Our industry does have a responsibility to proactively make authoritative information on new technology readily available to the consumers who will use it and in an easy to understand form.  Information on new technology needs to clearly articulate the fundamentals of the technology itself, how it compares to older technology, how the technology compares to similar things in other industries, places or situations, what the tangible and intangible benefits are, what the downside is and how those negatives relate to other situations we find ourselves in on a regular basic.  None of the key players with the requisite knowledge in our industry have done a good job in this arena  – regulators, utilities, vendors, consultants, etc. – let alone in the education system.

Another issue is related to how we respond those who do exhibit FUD. How far do we go allowing a problem to persist that is readily solved by education and instead coddle those who express FUD?  That is a societal question but my common sense tells me that we should avoid coddling as much as possible.   Here are some questions I came up with to explore this aspect:

• Can I opt out of receiving public water because I hear it might contain small but legal amounts of carcinogenic substances and instead require the water company to deliver bottled water to my home?
• Can I demand that cell phone makers provide an analog rotary dial on cell phones because I believe that pressing digital buttons causes arthritis (I read it on the Internet so it must be true)?
• Can I opt out of being exposed to television signals and choose to have the entertainers come to my house and perform in person?
• Can I opt out of receiving my phone calls by cellular signal and choose to have a long wire run to my mobile phone with a crew following me everywhere with a spool of wire?
• Can I opt out of breathing public California air because it sometimes looks or smells bad?  The option is to mandate the creation of a new California Department of Air Supply to deliver canned air to my home.  It would of course be a precisely regulated mix of oxygen/nitrogen with elaborate testing, certification, and penalties for non-compliance – and a department to run it – and a new tax to pay for that!
• Can I opt out of stopping at traffic lights because I hear the color red might cause a seizure or require that stop lights I might be near use orange instead of red?

I hope regulators don’t go too far in forcing regulated entities to coddle consumers who have a fear of technology change.  The business case tells us that it may be cheaper to coddle a few than fight it on principle.  This may be a slippery slope however and doesn’t bode well for the prospects of instead focusing on improving education in science and technology to not only make it easier to live in an increasingly technology driven world but to actually contribute to advancing technology forward for the betterment of us all.

Gunther on Smart Grid blog: http://erichgunther.blogspot.com/

I had a long and frustrating conversation at DistribuTECH with several people on storage. We had serious problems with vocabulary and understanding when it came to storage. Each of us was using different terms or terms differently. I spent time thinking about how the conversation could have been better and finally realized that there is a need for a non-technical classification scheme for electric storage.

With that said, here is my first pass (consider this alpha test level):

1)      Fixed or mobile

This one is pretty easy and is in common use in the industry. Fixed storage is installed and does not move from charge to charge or discharge to discharge. It may be moved, but it is a large effort to move it. Mobile storage moves, the most commonly discussed mobile storage is electric vehicles.

2)      Stabilize, support or shift

While these terms are in use by many, the use of them differs greatly. So here is my attempt to define them:

a)      Stabilize – provides short ride through capability for the grid for voltage, frequency or other characteristics. Typically stabilization is done for a handful of cycles and almost never more than 5 minutes at a time. Storage needs to have a very high discharge and ramp rate compared to the overall amount of energy stored. Systems can be cycled tens of thousands of times.

b)      Support – provides support for the grid for short periods of time providing energy in locations that have voltage or energy delivery issues for a period of time on a regular basis (e.g. daily issues with lack of energy delivery capability for a 90 minute peak). In most cases support storage has energy storage capability that is a multiple of the discharge rate. Systems can be cycled thousands of times.

c)      Shift – these systems are designed to take in large amounts of energy when there is excess and provide long period (e.g. 24 hour or longer) energy delivery. Shift systems have very large energy storage capability compared to the discharge rate. The system should be able to be cycled hundreds of times.

3)      Returnable or non-returnable

This is the set of terms not in use in the industry, but they are key to the overall discussion. Returnable storage are systems that are designed to deliver electricity back to the grid when there is a need. Non-returnable storage is a way to convert electricity into something else that will be used in that form will not be returned to the grid as electricity.

With these three sets of terms it is possible to classify almost every kind of storage that is available today. Take using ice storage for air conditioning – it is a fixed, support, non-returnable system. An EV becomes a mobile, support, non-returnable (right now based on current warranties) system.

With this classification system, comparison between storage systems gets easier, as people try to decide do I need this one in the overall mix and why should I pay attention to it. I welcome comments and feedback on the classification system. EnerNex has been kind enough put this on the blog to allow for an open conversation.

One of the major talking points of the week, was our new-found partnership with Paul De Martini of Newport Consulting.  In early January, EnerNex announced our strategic alliance with Paul’s firm to focus on the development and management of advanced technology for grid modernization and customer engagement.

“I have had the pleasure of knowing and working with Paul for several years, one of Smart Grid’s most well-known pioneers. I’m excited to join forces with Paul to address the many challenges facing the utility industry as we implement modern grid technologies and update the business processes necessary to support them,” said Erich Gunther, EnerNex co-founder, chief technology officer.

Several EnerNex staff participated in speaking roles throughout the conference.

• Sandy Bacik, Ron Farquharson, Erich Gunther, and Christian Perreault with Hydro Quebec led a Utility University Track on the topic of “Essentials for Automating the Smart Grid.”
• Bruce Muschlitz presented the 61850 testing committee work at the DNP/UCA Users Group Meeting.
• Bobby Brown participated in Thursday morning’s breakfast keynote panel on “Establishing Security Standards for The Energy Industry.”
• Jeremy Laundergan presented “Utility Service Continuity: Combining Security, Disaster Recovery, Availability and Risk Management” on Wednesday morning during the Mobile and Geospatial track.
• Lastly, Grant Gilchrist spoke on two panel sessions titled:  ”DNP3 Standards and Enhancements” and “Mr. NISTR: What’s Happening with Standards?”

Take a look at our week in pictures…

I recently attended the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) meeting in Anaheim, California.  This Winter Meeting was once a general meeting, but is now a meeting of the committees and does not offer any papers, panel sessions, or other things that we often associate with IEEE meetings.

The majority of my time was devoted to the Power Quality portion of the IEEE PES.  I am the chair of the Standard Coordinating Committee 22 (SCC22), the group that coordinates the different societies in developing IEEE standards that relate to Power Quality.  At this meeting, we discovered that the IEEE Electromagnetic Coordination committee had developed a pair of standards that limited waveform distortion, or harmonics, on single-phase loads.  Standard 1836 limits the harmonics related to loads less than 16 amps, and standard 1837 limits harmonics for loads greater than 16 amps.   These standards were developed very quickly because the committee chose to accept the European IEC standards that serve the same purpose.  The Canadian members had approached my group to accept those standards, and we rejected the suggestion because the manufacturers and utilities don’t want the limits imposed.  Taking the effort to a different committee was shopping for a sponsor, and the SCC organization is the way that efforts such as that are held in check.  SCC22 is now involved and will encourage power companies and other manufacturers to get involved in the process.

In addition to the day and a half of Power Quality meetings, we had the opportunity to discuss other transmission and distribution subjects, substation problems and designs, power system relaying changes and power systems communications opportunities.  As at most of these types of meetings, there is much to cover and the sessions overlap quite a lot.  My assignments in Power Quality kept me busy for the first day and a half, but I did manage to attend the Distribution Reliability meeting.  There was a paper presented by a utility noting that they had improved the way they count occurrences and were working to improve reliability.  Adding sensors to their system was leading to faster restoration times because the repair crews could be dispatched more directly than before.  That wasn’t a surprise, but the audience appreciates some evidence that it really does work.  Adding sensors and improving the overview of the system does indeed make problem resolution faster and less expensive.

I wasn’t able to attend the Relay group’s meeting on the Use of Synchrophasor Measurements in Protection Applications.  The synchrophasors being installed as part of the Smart Grid “upgrade” of the transmission system give operators a wide area view of the condition of the system and are something that we have seen in simulations but have not actually experience before the last few years.  Now, with the speed of the measurements and the fast communications systems, the operators have a new tool for watching the condition of the system.  The Relay Committee is looking at the results and the opportunities to automatically make decisions that would stop cascading outages and other system disasters before they start.

The Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) kicked off 2012 with a bang adding new Governing Board members, adding new standards to the SGIP Catalog of Standards (CoS), and conducting virtual meetings of the Governing Board and the SGIP plenary.

After the completing the runoff elections in December, the 2012 Governing Board includes 7 brand new members:

• Mike Coop, ThinkSmartGrid – Stakeholder Category 3, Consumers – Residential, Commercial, and Industrial
• Bill Lawrence, Lockheed Martin – Stakeholder Category 9, Independent Power Producers
• Lisa Kaiser, Department of Homeland Security – Stakeholder Category 15, Relevant Federal Government Agencies
• Mark Smith, Reliant Energy – Stakeholder Category 17, Retail Service Providers
• David Forfia, Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) – Stakeholder Category 21, Transmission Operators and Independent System Operators
• Don Von Dollen, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) – Stakeholder Category 23, At-Large
• Doug Kim, Southern California Edison – Stakeholder Category 23, At-Large

The Catalog of Standards had three additional standards added following the December ballot, bringing the grand total of standards added since June, 2011 to 12.  The three new standards include:

• IEEE 1815-2010, IEEE Standard for Electric Power Systems Communications – Distributed Network Protocol (DNP3)
• eMIX, OASIS Energy Market Information eXchange
• SGIP 2011-0008-1, Transition and Coexistence from SEP 1.x to SEP 2.0

The Governing Board met on January 12^th, discussing several key topics and re-elected Steve Widergren as the SGIP Plenary Chair for his second consecutive term.  Dr. George Arnold discussed NIST’s expectations of the Board as the SGIP Administrator and NIST develop a draft business plan for SGIP self-sustainment.  Dr. Arnold made it clear that NIST would continue to be an active part of the SGIP and even plans to support some of the funding as long as it is supported by Congress.  But, the responsibility will be with the Governing Board to select the legal structure of the organization and to develop an execution plan.  The SGIP legal entity should be established by the middle of the year and we should begin executing the plan by the end of 2012.

The SGIP Plenary meeting is January 20.  This is a mandatory meeting for all Participating SGIP member organizations and attendance counts towards their voting rights.  The SGIP is seeking nominees for the upcoming standing committee ballots in the Smart Grid Architecture Committee, the Smart Grid Testing and Certification Committee, and the recently approved Implementation Methodology Committee.  The SGIP is also seeking nominees for the SGIP Plenary Vice Chair and Secretary.  The 2012 committee and Plenary Leadership voting will begin in late February and the newly-elected members will be in place by mid-March.

You hear a lot about the use of “cloud computing” in Smart Grid systems today.  The idea seems to be that instead of a utility building and maintaining its own Energy Management System (EMS), Distribution Management System (DMS), or Meter Data Management System (MDMS) hardware and software, it buys them as services from a provider.  The provider has a central “server farm” somewhere that it keeps up-to-date with the latest technology for the benefit of the utility.  The utility’s operators log into these systems via the web (presumably with sufficient security controls in place) and operate their power system through this interface.

In principle, this sounds like a great idea, especially for small utilities with smaller budgets.  The utility gets the benefit of the latest technology without the costs of building and maintaining the system.  The provider can do all the building and maintaining and still offer the service at a reasonable price because of economies of scale; they are doing this for more than one utility, after all.

But what if the utility becomes dissatisfied with the service of the provider?  How easy is it to switch providers?  Is the utility forever tying its success to that of the provider?  To me, the key question here is, “Where are you using your standards?”

The answer to that question lies with the location of the Front-End Processor, or FEP.  In either a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) network or an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) network, this is the bottleneck in the system through which all the data gathered by the meters, sensors or other devices must pass.  It goes by a variety of different names, such as head-end, data collector, master station or network manager, but for the purposes of this discussion, let’s call it a FEP.

Consider two different “cloud computing” topologies:

• FEP in the Cloud.  In Figure 1, the connections from  SCADA or AMI networks are brought to the provider’s site and the FEP for the data is located at that site.  If it is necessary to switch providers, it is possible because today these connections are largely standardized, using protocols such as ANSI C12, IEC 61850, DNP3, Modbus and others.  The only problem is that depending on the technology, there may be a lot more than one connection to move from one provider to another, and a lot of provisioning and configuration to change.
• FEP at the Utility.  Figure 2 solves these problems by locating the FEP at the utility.  So only one connection, from the FEP to the provider, needs to be moved if providers change.  The problem here is that the standards for this kind of interface are very new, and it’s not certain that the provider and the utility will both have implemented the same standard in the same way, if they use standards at all.  The two leading standards suites here are IEC 61968/IEC 61970 (Common Information Model) and MultiSpeak. It is possible that the cloud provider may not be using either one of these technologies, but will attempt to use a proprietary method.  A second issue is that this connection will have to carry a lot of data, with required latencies ranging from 2 seconds (typical SCADA) to every 15 minutes (aggressive AMI) to once a day (typical AMI).

So if you’re considering moving your utility applications to the cloud, I recommend:

• Make sure all your interfaces to the provider are standardized, meaning from the SCADA or AMI network to the provider, not just from the provider to the operator.
• When developing your business case, consider carefully not just the cost savings of using a cloud provider, but also the relative costs of switching providers if you become dissatisfied with them in the future.

These two recommendations are just a specific way of phrasing the rule that we at EnerNex have been promoting in general for years now:

To minimize the impact of changes on your network, first clearly identify some well-defined points of interoperability, and then apply appropriate open standards to those critical points.

This rule applies equally well whether the changes involved are technological changes, organizational changes, or vendor changes.

Lastly, it is important to remember that the choice of where to deploy standards is only one of many factors that should be considered when making this kind of decision.  Some factors which should be considered when thinking about using “the cloud” include:

• Significant changes in business processes, with corresponding retraining costs.  Consider the impact on new substation installation, configuration, testing, disaster continuance, backups, and so on.  For AMI systems, consider customer move-in/move-outs, provisioning, forecasting, outage management… and the list goes on.
• Responsibility for NERC CIP and overall reliability requirements.  Does the cloud provider now have to follow NERC rules?  Do they have to file reports to NERC?  Will the utility take full responsibility and hold their cloud provider harmless for reliability violations?
• Performance concerns.  As noted earlier, the entire utility data set will now be shipped to another organization in “real-time”, whatever that term means to the application.  Sometimes this organization may be in an entirely different state or province.  The impact of such a massive data transfer on latency could be very significant.

Choosing to use “the cloud” may be a cost-effective way for smaller utilities to develop a smart grid.  But as with all outsourcing decisions, it should not be taken lightly.

Figure 1 – Front End Processor in the Cloud

Figure 2 – Front-End Processor at the Utility

New technologies require completely new infrastructures to maximize efficiency and effectiveness. History demonstrates these transitions over and over again.  At the turn of the 20th century, different types of ‘horseless carriages’ competed with horse-drawn carriages and wagons such as battery-electric cars, steam-powered vehicles and early internal combustion engine (ICE) powered cars.  The successful adoption and diffusion of early ICE-powered cars was driven by easy access to the gasoline fueling infrastructure including cans, barrels, home refueling outfits, parking garage refueling facilities, mobile stations, hand carts and curb pumps .  Later, the gas pump service station infrastructure guaranteed that ICE cars would dominate for the remainder of the 20th century.

In 1912, 30,000 electric cars were registered.  It was the mature technology, but couldn’t compete with the gasoline re-fueling infrastructure due to pragmatic concerns of range anxiety, battery weight, long charge time, and higher cost.  100 years later, pragmatic adopters are still concerned about electric car total cost of ownership (TCO) and range anxiety.  Without a robust vehicle-to-grid (V2G) infrastructure to mitigate these concerns, electric cars will fail…again.

Building out infrastructure is not sexy, but necessary for technology leaps.  History remembers Ford’s Model T as the disruptive innovation, not the infrastructure innovators such as gas service station entrepreneurs.  The smart grid infrastructure can enable massive adoption of electric cars, but we must first address Rogers’ five factors of innovation: relative advantage, compatability, complexity, trialability and observability. Developing a Smart Grid, stakeholders such as the SGIP play a vital role in reviewing use cases, creating requirements and working with standards developing organizations laying the groundwork for a Vehicle-2-Grid infrastructure.

A.  Standard access control EVSE manufacturers

B.  Modernizing the grid is critical to developing the EV infrastructure

In reviewing various publications and notices today, I found the industry had a basket full of Christmas presents from the regulatory agencies around the world. This makes for an interesting start for 2012.

In Europe the regulatory staff is hard at work defining minimum criteria for smart meters. What will be the minimum function that a utility or meter service provider will be allowed to deploy in the European Union? This means that any project that is about to launch may have to wait until the rules are finalized late in 2012.

In the UK new rules for how metering is done and how data is shared are being crafted by OFGEM – the electricity and gas regulator. While they will in the long run make things better for everyone, it puts a chill on the deployment of meters in the UK for the balance of the year. This probably is not an issue, since other regulatory proceedings are underway that will delay the start of mass rollouts of meters until 2013 or 2014.

In Australia, the regulators are reviewing the rules for privacy, data use and requirements for smart meters. Again the review will probably delay any programs that have not started until into 2013.

In the US a number of states are also looking at Opt-Out options, radio frequency issues, interference is

The Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) celebrated its 2 year birthday party at Grid-Interop in Phoenix December 4 – 8.  As we rapidly approach 2012, three key activities/announcements occurred that people following Smart Grid standards should be aware of.

In September 2011, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra challenged utilities across the country to develop a “Green Button”— detailed customer usage information available for download in a simple, common format.  NIST, California utilities, vendors, and the SGIP teamed together to meet the challenge presented to actually demonstrate the ability to download a consumer’s energy usage information.  The first “Green Button” solutions were introduced at Grid-Interop.  The progress made over the course of only 2 months was briefed by Dr. Dave Wollman and Dr. Marty Burns at the SGIP Governing Board meeting.  The progress status was followed by a heavily-attended 90 minute breakout session that provided the technical details of how to apply the same technology at other utilities.  Green Button applications were prominent throughout Grid-Interop with several vendors using the standard output to express it in tabular or charted formats on a wide variety of hardware and software.  Honeywell even had a thermostat that could download a file from an SAP server and present the data to the consumer on-demand.  Several multi-vendor collaborations and some applications were actually created on-the-fly during the event.  The rapid response to the challenge and the ability to utilize new Smart Grid standards developed under the NIST/SGIP umbrella prove that the work is not only important, but it is ready to begin implementing.  And, this is just the beginning with “Green Button”.  We are sure to see some very innovative analytic tools that can take energy usage information and help companies and people automatically optimize the way they use electricity.

The first ever “Plug-in” showcased several SGIP-led Smart Grid standards at Grid-Interop.  The event demonstrated how the implementation of Smart Grid standards is paying off by accelerating the availability of interoperable products and systems. The Plug-In featured participation and products from over a dozen organizations – connected over a network infrastructure and communicating to demonstrate a broad range of capabilities including three demand response scenarios, a distribution automation scenario based on IEC 61850, test and monitoring tools, and security capabilities. Attendees at the event had the opportunity to see an electric vehicle and charging stations interoperating with network equipment, and a “Green Button” demonstration providing detailed energy information for consumers – a realization in less than three months of the call to action made in September at Grid Week by the White House. The Plug-In was extremely well received by attendees and participants alike and plans are already taking shape for bigger and better future events to keep pace with the rapid adoption of Smart Grid standards and the technologies emerging based upon those standards.

Finally, NIST and the SGIP Administrator (EnerNex) presented a first iteration on how the SGIP can be a self-sustaining organization.  Dr. George Arnold, NIST’s National Coordinator for Smart Grid Interoperability Standards, challenged the SGIP Governing Board to establish the SGIP as a legal entity and begin moving towards a Private-Public organizational structure by the end of 2012.  Needless to say, this received a lot of attention for the remainder of meetings, with SGIP leadership contemplating how to continue meeting its mission while also attracting, engaging, and retaining larger membership numbers and finding alternative funding sources other than NIST in the future.  This will be a very focused activity involving NIST, the SGIP Governing Board and Plenary Leadership, and EnerNex over the course of 2012.