Silicon Valley Power AMI

Silicon Valley Power (SVP) is a not-for-profit municipal electric utility owned and operated by the city of Santa Clara, Calif. Silicon Valley Power service territory encompasses 19.3 square miles and provides power for more than 50,000 customers. The residential sector includes nearly 43,000 customers; the bulk of the remaining customers are included in the Commercial/ Industrial category, including nationally recognized companies such as Applied Materials, Intel, National Semiconductor, and Yahoo!

EnerNex is providing consulting services to assist SVP in the design and implementation of an Automated Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and Meter Data Management System (MDMS) working under the guidance of NexLevel IT, Inc. which is functioning as the Project Management Office (PMO) leader.

Among the services provided are the following:

Establish a detailed understanding of the current state of metering processes and systems at the City.
Review and refine architectural requirements based upon established and emerging technologies and product roadmaps
Support the definition of any necessary technology or product pilots as well as the analysis of pilot findings
Assist in the development of a Request for Proposal (RFP) document.
Identify target vendors from whom to solicit RFP responses
Support the completion of an RFP process with review, clarification and consultation on the scoring of responses, resulting in final technology package to support the SVP AMI / MDM implementation
Identify best practice examples and solutions from peer utilities and leading vendors relating to architecture, RFP and implementation planning
Act as a technology, product and implementation practices resource to the SVP AMI program office.
Support cost/benefit analysis and cost justification of selected technologies and vendors
Supply sample RFP documents to be used as potential templates
Support collaboration requirements both remotely and on site at the City, as needed.

Southern California Edison AMI

EnerNex was retained by Southern California Edison (SCE) to provide consulting engineering services in the areas of requirements capture, technology assessment, requirements analysis, and architecture development. This effort is the first part of a planned three-phase program to specify, procure, test, and deploy advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) for SCE’s 4.6 million customers.

We assisted SCE with developing business requirements, examining feasibility of technologies, and cost benefit analysis, which comprise the 18-month first phase of the overall program. The second phase will focus on final development activities, including lab and field testing advanced metering solutions. After successful completion of development and authorization by the California Public Utilities Commission, full deployment of the company’s AMI program could begin in late 2009.

The overall systems engineering approach being taken by SCE is based on the EPRI IntelliGrid Architecture guidelines. Specifically, SCE is using the use-case-based IntelliGrid methodology to ensure that all aspects of an AMI system -meters, communication infrastructure, and enterprise software — are evaluated in a rigorous manner that results in high quality, traceable and defendable requirements.

In the IntelliGrid methodology adopted by SCE, cross-organizational teams developed 18 use cases, or narratives, describing the expected near and long-term use of the AMI system. The teams divided each use case into multiple alternate scenarios and then developed a detailed sequence of steps for each scenario. Finally, the teams translated each step into one or more requirements to be placed on the components of the AMI system. The IntelliGrid methodology permitted teams to map these requirements to specific customer and business needs. EnerNex personnel trained members of the other SCE consulting systems engineering contractor – IBM – in the IntelliGrid methodology. EnerNex lead two of the three requirements capture and analysis facilitator / analysis teams and IBM lead the third.

After an eight-month process involving more than 200 subject matter experts and 40 workshops, SCE released in June 2006 a preliminary set of requirements for its AMI system. These preliminary requirements were used to perform cost-benefit analyses and create an AMI system architecture and design, leading to a complete set of requirements to engage vendors in next generation product development. EnerNex participated in the business case development process using SCE’s business case analysis methodology (as opposed to EnerNex’s own methodology which is similar).

EnerNex’s support of this effort started with implementing a series of workshops with stakeholders to aid in the definition of business requirements, compiling use cases to facilitate requirements definition and the cost/benefit analysis, and support in the identification and examination of possible technologies. EnerNex is also participating in the project’s system architecture and engineering teams, the external technical advisory board, and is facilitating technical information exchange with external groups and projects such as the GridWise Architecture Council, OpenAMI, IntelliGrid, the UCA International Users Group and numerous standards organizations.

Consumers Energy AMI

EnerNex is assisting Consumers Energy in the development of requirements and business cases, as well as, review and selection of AMI designs and technology solutions for meters, communication networks, meter data management systems and integration with the utility’s information and operation technology systems. The overall systems engineering approach being taken is based on the EPRI IntelliGrid Architecture guidelines. Specifically, EnerNex is using the use-case-based IntelliGrid methodology to ensure that all aspects of an AMI system -meters, communication infrastructure, and enterprise software — are evaluated in a rigorous manner that results in high quality, traceable and defendable requirements.

The IntelliGrid methodology develops use cases, or narratives, describing the expected near and long-term use of the AMI system. The teams divided each use case into multiple alternate scenarios and then developed a detailed sequence of steps for each scenario. Finally, the teams translated each step into one or more requirements to be placed on the components of the AMI system. The IntelliGrid methodology permitted teams to map these requirements to specific customer and business needs.

Consumers Energy, the principal subsidiary of CMS Energy, provides natural gas and electricity to nearly 6.5 million of Michigan’s 10 million residents in all 68 Lower Peninsula counties. For more information on Consumers Energy, visit http://www.consumersenergy.com

California Energy Commission AMI

Our central experience in advanced metering began when, under contract to the California Institute for Energy Efficiency (CIEE), EnerNex completed a significant project with the California Energy Commission to develop a draft high level reference design for advanced metering and demand responsive infrastructure. The intent of this reference design was to facilitate widespread, interoperable, and standards-based advanced metering and demand response systems across the State of California. This document can be found here.

To promote the draft reference design and the vision it describes, EnerNex helped the CEC to organize public workshops to reach out to the demand response stakeholder community and solicit their input. In addition, we developed a checklist for regulators, utilities, and others to evaluate AMI system proposals. This can be found on the Internet here.

These workshops led to the creation of the OpenAMI task force (http://www.openami.org/), an industry-led body that is developing open, standardized protocol solutions for Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). OpenAMI works under the guidance of UtilityAMI, a utility-only organization that focuses on ensuring AMI products evolve to meet the needs of their end-users. EnerNex co-founder Erich Gunther is the founder and group facilitator of UtilityAMI which has more than 90 utility members and guests. EnerNex consultant Grant Gilchrist served as the secretary and facilitator for OpenAMI. EnerNex has provided facilitation and contributions to both UtilityAMI and OpenAMI since the groups’ creation.

EnerNex continues to provide support to the CEC in facilitating the implementation of demand responsive infrastructure. Another California initiative is the intention by the state to require that every new building in California contain a Programmable Communicating Thermostat (PCT). Under contract to the CIEE, EnerNex has organized and facilitated workshops between vendors, utilities, the CEC, the California Public Utilities Commission and other stakeholders to discuss how a statewide communications system for implementing demand response through PCTs could be developed. EnerNex continues to help the CEC and other stakeholders determine the challenges and solutions for deploying such a system.

BC Hydro Smart Metering Initiative

EnerNex is providing consulting services to BC Hydro for the review and prioritization of business requirements for their Smart Metering and Infrastructure (SMI) Project. Throughout this work, EnerNex has assisted BC Hydro to analyze the captured information and identify missing opportunities to meet their smart metering initiatives. EnerNex used the collected data to ensure that existing use cases and requirements have identified values. The information is being used to propose suggestions and alternatives to the RFP documents for the SMI project. This support is a building block in the process leading to specifying, deploying and implementing smart metering infrastructure to BC Hydro’s customers.

Entergy AMI

EnerNex assisted Entergy in evaluating options for possible deployment of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). The company evaluated their AMI Pilot Project Plan, evaluating implementation plans and making recommendations for AMI, demand response and smart grid planning. This evaluation provided the necessary support to specify, deploy and implement AMI to Entergy’s customers.

The Entergy Operating Companies have enlisted EnerNex and IBM to develop a system wide strategy, supporting cost model, and business plan for the deployment of smart metering and related systems. EnerNex is focused on the technical aspects of the project while IBM has responsibility for the business case / plan aspects.

The EnerNex/IBM team will provide the design and development of requirements and key business processes for post installation operations including:

Evaluation of key technology components and providers.
Identification of application interface requirements.
Analysis of the pros and cons of a meter data management system deployment.
An evaluation of the various options for backhaul communications.
Multi-year implementation plan.

Tennessee Valley Public Power Association

The Tennessee Valley Public Power Association (TVPPA) is a trade association representing the needs and interests of the 159 municipal and cooperative distribution utilities with firm power contracts with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) residing in the seven-state region known as the Tennessee Valley.

TVPPA desires to leverage the advanced features of AMI technology to facilitate improved operation of distribution systems, demand response, and integration of customer resources with the operation of the power system. EnerNex, in conjunction with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), is assisting the TVPPA to develop an adaptable roadmap and implementation plan that facilitates entry at any level and any time that can be used by any of TVPPA’s member utilities.

OpenAMI

EnerNex is an active member of the OpenAMI Task Force on Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and Demand Response (DR), and was instrumental in its creation. The OpenAMI Task Force is a group of major vendors, utilities, researchers, and consultants from across the electrical metering industry whose goal is to establish an open, standard communications architecture for metering and demand response applications. EnerNex is a key part of this effort, for three reasons:

OpenAMI has agreed to use as a starting point the Draft Reference Design for Demand Response developed by EnerNex for the California Energy Commission.
The task force has also agreed to incorporate the Use Cases and methodology incorporated in the IntelliGrid Architecture, which EnerNex was heavily involved in developing. Grant Gilchrist of EnerNex is helping to facilitate this Use Case work.
Erich Gunther of EnerNex is on the board of directors of the UCA International Users Group and chairs the OpenDR subcommittee under whose auspices the OpenAMI task force has been formed.

OpenAMI has so far established a set of principles for evaluating AMI and DR systems, agreed upon a working set of domains and interfaces, and begun work on gathering requirements from the utility members on the functionality of AMI systems.

OpenAMI (www.openami.org) is an energy industry task force that, like the IntelliGrid Portal Project, is attempting to develop a communications reference design for the utility consumer environment. However, there is a difference in scope between the two projects.

A portal might be involved with a variety of utility operations, such as outage detection, customer management, distributed generation, market participation, and even such things as theft detection, entertainment, health monitoring, or security monitoring.

However, OpenAMI focuses on applying open standards to just two of a consumer portal’s possible functions: automatic metering and demand response. The acronym “AMI” refers to “Advanced Metering Infrastructure”. In the thinking of the OpenAMI task force, such an infrastructure might include consumer portals, which can range in physical form from very simple to more complex devices.

The OpenAMI task force was created primarily because several different jurisdictions (including Ontario) have lately begun the process of developing legislation requiring AMI and demand response. In particular, however, the impetus came from the California Energy Commission (CEC) and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). The CEC and CPUC announced their intentions to begin drafting legislation starting in 2005, based on previous and current pilot projects and studies done in California since 2000.

The CPUC released a ruling in February 2004 from an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ), requiring utilities to supply the CPUC with proposed business cases by June of 2005, explaining how they would implement AMI. The ALJ ruling listed a number of specific features that the business cases would be required to address. These particularly included the ability to:

Provide time-of-use (TOU) tariffs and critical peak pricing (CPP) to all consumers, with either fixed or variable notification to the consumer of when a critical peak price would be applie.
Provide real-time pricing (RTP) for larger (>200kW) consumers.
Provide all consumers with access to their personal hourly energy usage data at flexible intervals.
Be “compatible” with such advanced features as outage management, theft detection, forecasting and load control.

This ruling, particularly the portion about applying AMI to all consumers, got the attention of the metering industry. It was clear that to meet such requirements would require a huge expenditure by the utilities – as high as two billion dollars by some estimates. It was also clear (to some, at least) that if these huge California AMI systems were deployed without some type of open communications standards, utilities could find themselves “locked-in” to one particular vendor for a long time, resulting in even higher costs.

Following up on a recommendation made in a CEC PIER consultant report (http://ciee.ucop.edu/dretd/ReferenceDesign.pdf), the OpenAMI task force was created with the purpose of developing such standards – or at least designating existing standards for AMI use. It operates under the auspices of Utility Communications Architecture International (www.ucainternational.org), a users’ group that was originally developed for promoting and testing the IEC 61850 substation communications standard. This was considered a good home for the group because of the tight time frame imposed by the regulatory schedule. Traditional standards bodies such as the IEEE and IEC were perceived to be very slow, and OpenAMI therefore did not want to be considered a standards body. OpenAMI members now include representatives of utilities, vendors, consultants, and regulators from many different jurisdictions.

The first task that OpenAMI addressed was to develop a set of principles on which all AMI systems should be evaluated. These included: shareability, ubiquity, integrity, ease-of-use, cost-effectiveness, standardization, openness, and security. The group voted to adopt a common definition of these principles based on a draft reference design previously developed for the CEC by EnerNex.

OpenAMI also produced an agreement, again based on the draft reference design, of the major actors in a working AMI system, and what the boundaries of such a system should be. This was an important step toward developing requirements and defining the necessary standardized interfaces between the actors.

However, OpenAMI encountered problems when it next tried to address a request from the CEC to comment on, and provide its interpretation of, the ALJ rulings. The main issues arose from the portions of the ruling stating the need for the AMI system to “be compatible with” and “capable of interfacing with” more advanced billing, demand response and load control features.

Some members interpreted this wording to mean that the AMI system itself should not provide these features, and that the business cases submitted by the California utilities should concentrate on having the AMI system provide the advanced metering tariffs only.

Other members argued that this was not truly AMI, but simply automatic meter reading (AMR), and that if the CPUC accepted business cases based on such an interpretation, California would end up with an infrastructure that was not open, could not expand to provide new features, and would require “forklift upgrades” when new technology was required because utilities would be “locked in” to a particular vendor.

Unable to agree on a definitive statement on the ALJ rulings, the OpenAMI task force decided to try to disconnect itself from the California regulatory process and not make a formal interpretation to the CPUC.

OpenAMI decided to instead continue developing a reference design based on a top-down approach. The group asked its utility members for lists of requirements, which were captured in brainstorming sessions and then organized into possible use case scenarios. As of August 2005, OpenAMI has agreed on a draft set of fifteen use cases, some of which do involve more advanced features like load control, outage management and theft detection. The group will next try to agree on the interfaces and steps in these scenarios, as a prelude to developing a requirements document. This methodology, taken from the IntelliGrid Architecture recommendations, was agreed to by the members early on.

The schedule for OpenAMI is an ambitious one. The final deliverables are intended to be the requirements document, the reference design, an information model, and interoperability guidelines, all by early 2006. However, the group is making progress with its new top-down approach, and there is good reason to expect success.

A bigger concern may be that without a definitive interpretation of the ALJ ruling by OpenAMI, utilities will be free to interpret it however they choose, and the future of AMI in California may suffer.

UtilityAMI

The UtilityAMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) Working Group was formed in November 2005 to address lack of utility guidance for the OpenAMI Working Group. Guidance and division of effort was needed for requirements to be driven by those entities who will buy AMI systems and their components – utilities themselves.

The purpose of UtilityAMI is to provide a forum for utility representatives to define serviceability, security and interoperability guidelines for advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and demand responsive infrastructure (DRI) from a utility / energy service provider perspective.

The mission of UtilityAMI is to develop high-level policy statements that can be used to facilitate efficient requirements and specification development using a common language that minimizes confusion and misunderstanding between utilities and vendors. UtilityAMI will also coordinate with other industry groups as required to efficiently carry out this mission.

UtilityAMI has a goal to utilize the UtilityAMI work products to influence the vendor community to produce products and services that utilities need to support their AMI and DRI initiatives. To date, glossary and common requirements documents have been produced, with the latter being ratified by nine utilities and one utility-sponsored entity in the Northern hemisphere.

OpenHAN

The OpenHAN (Home Area Network) Task Force is one of three operating groups under the guidance of UtilityAMI. As the name implies, this task force focuses on the Consumer Interface task as defined by UtilityAMI.

The primary effort of the task force was to develop the so-called UtilityAMI 2008 Home Area Network System Requirements Specification (UtilityAMI 2008 HAN SRS). This collaborative effort involved more than ten investor-owned North American utilities serving more than 28 million electric and gas customers in 17 US states and Canadian provinces. It is the goal of the OpenHAN Task Force that its membership broaden to include international utilities as AMI systems become compelling to additional groups.

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