EET&D : How can a communications equipment and software business such as ABB Tropos Wireless Communication Systems contribute to making the electrical power grid more reliable and efficient?
Pilgrim : Well, the concept of a smart grid is about combining information, automation, and communications technology to create a more responsive and intelligent electric grid. So you really can’t have a smart grid without communications and the software to manage it. Taking this a step further, the intelligence in the electrical infrastructure and management systems is only as good as the ability to communicate the status and control information necessary to support the specific applications. In other words you can’t have a smart grid without communications and, if anything, the communications needs to be more reliable than the power grid. This is because you need visibility and control over your grid assets most when there is a fault or an outage. Communications have to remain up in these situations.
EET&D : What are the basic requirements for a smart grid communication network?
Pilgrim : Reliability is the number one requirement if you talk to the utilities. This is really a combination of survivability and availability, with availability meaning, ‘Do I have access to the network resource when I need it?’ both in terms of system uptime as well as system service availability. Survivability deals with how the network performs during exceptional or unplanned events, think Hurricane Sandy or a major winter storm. Utilities should be looking for communications solutions with resilient architectures that are fault-tolerant and have back-up power systems.
Other factors to consider in selecting communications include:
- Coverage – Utilities cover large areas with lots of remote assets to connect that are not always close to populated areas
- Security – This is growing in importance and is getting a lot of attention in the news and from government lately with the revelations about organized hacking from foreign nations. Smart grids are large scale industrial control systems and the networks that connect them, whether legacy or IP-based, need to incorporate the well-tested layered security approaches utilized by enterprises.
- Performance – This is not so much about bandwidth per se. Latency is often more important, especially for applications like feeder protection. Bandwidth is important in the aggregate, however. As utilities deploy more and more applications, such as mobile workforce and substation video monitoring, bandwidth requirements will likely increase.
- Quality of Service (QoS) – Utilities can derive great value by running a mix of applications over a single network, but some applications have real-time needs that need to be prioritized apropriately
- Lifecycle – 20 plus year utility asset operating lifetimes
EET&D : What roles do wired and wireless technologies play in smart grid communication networks?
Pilgrim : When we look at the utility network and the smart grid applications being deployed, we see it arranging itself in a more or less hierarchical fashion. On one end you’ve got your primary substations, your high-voltage sites, and your generation facilities. These sites have demanding requirements in terms of the capacity of data, performance requirements, and reliability. They’re also lower in number. Typically they’re served by wired technologies, specifically fiber. On the other end you’ve got your metering infrastructure. Here you’ve got lots of devices, but lower bandwidth, reliability, and latency requirements. At least as far as the individual device connections here, you’re going to find lower bandwidth, lower performance solutions. In the middle, what’s inbetween these two ends, we have the distribution network. Here we’re talking about hundreds or even thousands of devices and applications with varying requirements, although as we just discussed the individual applications can be demanding and so can the requirements in the aggregate. There’s some debate on the specific solutions and technologies to be employed here, but a consensus seems to be forming around private (utility-owned) wireless solutions. This is because in terms of coverage, total cost to the utility, and a desire to control matters of performance and security, private network solutions end up meeting the needs of utilities best.
EET&D : How can communications make electricity distribution more reliable and efficient?
Pilgrim : One example is with outage management. A dramatic instance of this was recently seen during Hurricane Sandy, but whether it’s a catastrophic failure or something more mundane like a tree falling on a power line, utilities are measured by their regulators on both the number and the duration of outages and can face penalties for poor performance. While some outages can’t be avoided, the length of the outage and its scope – the number of affected customers – can be minimized.
For decades, utilities have relied on customer phone calls and dispatching crews to the field to identify outage areas. They often received delayed and imprecise outage information, slowing power restoration. This reactive response process and associated long outage durations have often been viewed negatively by customers and regulators.
Utilities can improve customer satisfaction by deploying software, intelligent devices, and network communications to implement a state-of-the-art outage management system. These technologies can minimize the scope and duration of outages and enable proactive engagement with affected customers.
A key element enabling proactive outage management is real-time, bidirectional communication with utility devices in the field. Communications permit outage management systems (OMS) and other utility software systems to collect up-to-the second information from the distribution system, adjust system operation, and provide information to customer service systems and personnel for proactive customer engagement. Even better, the OMS could predict pending failures, enabling scheduled preventative maintenance and reducing unscheduled maintenance under outage conditions.
EET&D : What are the barriers to integrated smart grid system implementation and how can utilities overcome them?
Pilgrim : There are a couple of different dimensions to this notion of breaking down barriers. The first is in terms of breaking down organizational silos within the utilities and fostering information and operational systems convergence. As a communications vendor selling into utilities, we’ve frequently seen these organizational barriers come into play and influence technolgy decisions in ways that weren’t beneficial to the overall organization. A prime example of this would be a utility’s billing organization evaluating solutions based solely on the requirements of supporting their advanced metering infrastructure. By considering their own requirements in isolation from those of say, the distribution engineering or substation engineering groups within the utility, they end up with a solution that might not support the overall application requirements of the ‘smart grid.’ Many utilities are starting to take a more systematic and strategic approach to defining their ‘smart grid’ network requirements, but the former situation, and similar siloed decision making still occurs.
This is unfortunate because there are real advantages to using a shared infrastructure. It lowers the costs of network deployment and network operation, because you’re deploying once, and you have one network to manage. At the same time however it opens up possibilities in terms of tying data together from previous disparate systems, and then utilizing that data to achieve greater efficiencies. An example of this would be in the case of outage management where data from customer meters, pole-top sensors, and protective relays can be brought together to gain a more effective view of what’s actually going on out in the field. Going a step further, the data from OMS, SCADA, and DMS systems can be more quickly coordinated and the right repair resources identified and directed to the right locations more efficiently.
More efficient operation of the grid through more integrated communication and management systems can also help overcome another barrier to implementation – funding it. For regulated utilities any large investment in infrastructure, especially if it’s tied to a potential rate increase, is going to come under scrutiny by the relevant utility commission. However if there are tangible end benefits such as improved reliability of the grid, shorter outage times, and more responsive support for things like distributed generation, electric vehicle charging, and better voltage management, utilities may find they have an easier case to sell. What’s more some of these applications like CVR, for example, will likely have relatively short payback periods after which they’ve paid for themselves and may help offset the cost of other applications as well. Finally, one silver lining in the devastation of events like Hurricane Sandy is that they’ve driven home the need for grid modernization to regulators and made available federal investment dollars for the affected areas. With any luck, and hopefully with some early successful deployment examples, this may spur regulators in areas that weren’t affected to approve similar projects.
EET&D : Are industry interoperability standards important to smart grid communication networks? Why or why not?
Pilgrim : For communications, standards are vital. Deploying networks based on interoperability standards from the IEEE – Ethernet and 802.11, for example – and the IETF’s family of IP-related standards allow the network to be a platform that connects a variety of devices from a wide range of vendors and that supports a diverse set of applications. Using standards-based components and software lowers operating costs for utilities and allows them to take advantage of innovation from a larger pool of vendors.
It’s also important for vendors and utilities to support utility-specific standards. This means support for newer standards such as IEC 61850 and DNP 3 as well as legacy standards such as Modbus, which is important to avoid stranded assets with migrating to an IP-based grid communication solution.
EET&D : What is the appropriate role of compliance standards – whether mandated by regulators, politicians or industry associations – in smart grid communication networks?
Pilgrim : I think that while some utilities are taking cybersecurity seriously, others are being too passive in their approach, and are waiting for regulators to tell them what to do. Utilities and their customers would be better served if utilities aggressively adopted the existing interoperability standards for internet security – standards such as IPsec virtual private networks, AES for encryption, and RADIUS for authentication and accounting – and look to enterprise security for best practices in applying these technologies. Rather than mandate compliance standards, which often become a ceiling rather than a floor, regulators and politicians can best contribute by encouraging utilities to be transparent about cybersecurity issues. Transparency about security is not something that comes naturally but it’s vital so that utilities benefit from the vast knowledge and manpower of the internet security community.
EET&D : Thanks, Rob, for speaking with us. We look forward to keeping in touch as the smart grid and smart grid communications evolve.
About the Interviewee
Rob Pilgrim is responsible for corporate business development and strategy for ABB Tropos Wireless Communication Systems including global strategic partnerships, alliances, marketing, M&A assessment, and technology licensing. He built the Tropos solutions ecosystem and spearheaded the Tropos’ GridCom initiative, shifting the company into smart grid communications. Prior to joining Tropos in 2005, Rob was Director of Product Management and Business Development at early DSL pioneer Covad Communications, and spent over 10 years in various management roles in network communications including Sigma Networks and Fluor Corporation working on network programs for Level 3 Communications and T-Mobile. Pilgrim started his career at Georgia Power Company, an operating unit of the Southern Company. Rob holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.
