EnerNex Corporation 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.
