Between the Poles: Distributech 2013: Comprehensive smart grid pilot being developed by Kansas City Power and Light with support from DoE

Geoff Zeiss

About the Author

October 2024

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

Links

Lidar News
Gene Roe's laser scanning industry news
Open Source Geospatial Foundation OSGEO
OSGeo was created to support the collaborative development of open source geospatial software and promote its widespread use
Proven guidelines for reducing underground infrastructure damage at airports, university, industrial, and commercial campuses, and towns
There are proven measures that an administration, owner, or municipal government responsible for an airport, university, industrial or commercial campus, or town can undertake to reduce the risk of underground utility damage, the associated disruptions to operations and business and the danger for workers and the public.
Sharing information about the location of underground utilities
The U.S. devotes an estimated $10 billion annually to locating underground infrastructure. Every construction project requiring excavation involves significant efforts in locating underground utilities prior to and during construction to reduce the risk of injuries and unexpected project delays. But this information is rarely shared and the location of underground infrastructure is recaptured over and over again. There are successful examples around the world where municipal and regional governments have helped enable a shared underground utility network database.
Growing evidence of the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach to construction
Building information modeling (BIM) has been applied to design-build construction projects for many years. A growing number of countries are mandating BIM for public projects. While the UK government has said that "...we know that the largest prize for BIM lies in the operational stages of the project life-cycle", until recently there has not been hard data to support this conjecture. Similarly there has been only anecdotal support for an integrated BIM and geospatial approach for design, build, operate and maintain projects. Now we are beginning to see data from real world projects that offer evidence for the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.
Progress in geospatial, civil, and BIM interoperability promises efficient workflows for infrastructure
The BIM and geospatial interoperability challenge is the latest symptom of the broader problem of integrating AEC and geospatial workflows, that has contributed to low productivity in the construction sector. After the announcement about a year ago by Jack Dangermond and Andrew Anagnost of a new relationship to build a bridge between Autodesk and ESRI technologies, I thought it a good time to review progress toward interoperability between the AEC and geospatial worlds.
Geography2050: Accurate location information about underground infrastructure is essential for powering our future planet
I thought it would be worth while to include here a talk I gave at GEOGRAPHY 2050 Powering Our Future Planet at Columbia University in New York about the importance of accurate location information about underground infrastructure for the future development of the energy grid. With some notable exceptions accurately recording the location of subsurface infrastructure including oil, gas, electric power and other energy infrastructure is ignored - perhaps this is a case of out-of-sight is indeed out-of-mind. The reality is that knowing the location of underground energy infrastructure is critical for national security, for disaster planning and management, for public safety and for economic efficiency. Everyone is aware of at least one disaster resulting from or exacerbated by not knowing where our energy infrastructure is - the explosions in San Bruno in California (2010) and Belgium (2004) immediately come to mind.
Deep learning enables automated extraction of building footprints and road networks from satellite imagery
Automated feature extraction from satellite imagery has made major progress in the last year. Accurate building footprints extracted from high resolution satellite imagery are becoming available from companies such as Ecopia, which has just announced a partnership with DigitalGlobe, whose satellites are capable of 30 cm (approximately one foot) resolution. Also NVIDIA has demonstrated the ability to automate detection of many road networks using sophisticated algorithms and multi-spectral high resolution imagery.
BIM + geospatial interoperability would avoid another CAD + GIS quagmire
A specific challenge currently facing the AEC and geospatial industries is integrating building information models (BIM) and geospatial infrastructure and building models. There are parallels between what happened in the 1990s in unsuccessfully addressing CAD+GIS interoperability and the current challenge of BIM+geospatial interoperability. But there are also important differences which provide grounds for optimism that the availability of both BIM and geospatial standards, a vibrant open source geospatial community, and a new willingness on the part of major software players in the BIM and geospatial industries will make it possible to successfully address the latest interoperability challenge facing the AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) and geospatial industries.
BVLOS drones improve power line inspections amid increasing fire and storm risks for utilities | Utility Dive
Transmission line inspections for vegetation management and other purposes are essential in ensuring grid reliability and resilience. We saw the devastating effect of vegetation encroachment in the recent California fires, which in part have been blamed on failure to maintain properly cleared transmission lines. With drones that can cover great distances in a single flight and provide detailed and accurate aerial imagery of transmission lines and other infrastructure, it is now possible to almost completely automate this expensive process. Automating transmission line inspections for vegetation management using BVLOS drones not only saves money, but also could improve the resiliency and reliability of the transmission grid.

« Distributech 2013: After ARRA funding winds down Department of Energy shifts its focus | Main | Distributech 2013: LEED credits for demand response for commercial buildings by June 2013 »

February 06, 2013

Distributech 2013: Comprehensive smart grid pilot being developed by Kansas City Power and Light with support from DoE

At Distributech last week I had a chance to sit down with Bill Menge, Director of Kansas City Power and Light's (KCP&L) Smart Grid Demonstration Project. Kansas City Power & Light and its partners are demonstrating a comprehensive smart grid that includes most of the components commonly associated with smart grid including distributed generation, distribution automation, and customer empowerment. Part of the demonstration area contains the Green Impact Zone, 150 inner-city blocks that suffer from high levels of unemployment, poverty, and crime. Efforts in the Green Impact Zone will focus on training residents to implement weatherization and energy efficiency programs to reduce utility bills, conserve energy, and create jobs.

Kansas City Power and Light (KCP&L) is an investor owned utility with a service territory stretching over two states (Missouri and Kansas) with a total of 830'000 meters. KCP&L has a history of a progressive culture with the respect to new technology. They were an early adopter of AMR in the mid 1990s. They were also early adopters of digital outage management (OMS) and AM/FM/GIS.

The smart grid pilot is being supported by the Department of Energy. The total project value is $54 million, of which $24 million comes from a DOE SGIG grant. The demonstration area consists of ten circuits served by one substation across two square miles with 14,000 commercial and residential customers. The pilot is taking place in Missouri with the support of the Missouri PUC, which is so interested in the technology that they have a full-time employee dedicated to smart grid.

The pilot is quite comprehensive involving most aspects of smart grid including smart meters; time of use pricing; electrical vehicle charging including 10 Level 2 charging stations; home area networks with Zigbee; residential and commercial rooftop solar PV (total of 180 MW capacity); an automated substation based on the 61850 standard; distribution automation including line monitors; smart buildings; electricity storage (batteries with a total of one MWh capacity); in-home display; a full range of back office systems including AMI, MDM, DMS, OMS, D-SCADA, data analytics, and DERM (automated demand response); and cybersecurity.

KCP&L were able to obtain special time of use rates for the pilot from the PUC of 6 cents/kWh off-peak and 34 cents/kWh peak (3-7 pm).

The pilot also includes a significant public education component. An Innovation Center has been built which is designed to enable the public to see the main components of the pilot first hand.

The pilot was initiated in October 2010 when the first smart meter was installed. It is expected that most of the components will be in place by the end of February of this year. The full system will be able to be tested in its entirety by the end of June. The pilot is scheduled to run for two years during which time data will be collected and the costs and benefits of the system calculated. KCP&L appears to have a very open mind about the outcome of the pilot, their feeling being that with this much new technology it is hard to predict what the benefits will be in advance. Of course, Missouri is well known as the "Show me" state which may have something to do with it too. They are tracking costs during the design and build process and will collect data during the two years of operation, after which the data will be analyzed and the results provided to KCP&L, the Missouri PUC and DoE.