Utility industry vendors urged to adopt data model standard

Software comes and goes, but a utility's data model persists. A shared electric power data model enables electric power utilities to move away from incompatible point solutions toward tightly integrated solutions which are essential for real-time monitoring, situational assessment and decision making.  Based on today's smart devices and sensors and utility-wide communications network, decision making in a real-time, big data world requires tight integration between applications.  To realize the full potential of the smart grid, utility industry vendors need to move rapidly to adopt data model standards, that's the recommendation of Geoff Cameron of AGSI. which has developed a platform based on a utility data model standard that provides real-time access to critical infrastructure, customer and operational information. 

 

Traditional electric utilities are typically departmentalized and rely on manual, paper-based processes. Sharing knowledge is relatively slow, cumbersome, and reactive in nature and characterized by redundant data, many incompatible point solutions and non-real-time.  Facilities are inspected periodically, data is accumulated and analyzed, a report is written and sometime in the future do something is done.  Today's intelligent electronic devices, bidirectional communications networks, and automation provide the basis for dramatically improving a utility's SAIDI and SAIFI outage statistics.  It also provides a foundation for transactive energy.  What is required to realize the full potential of the smart grid is a platform that enables real-time integrated applications.

 

At Distributech 2017 Dan Guatto, COO and VP of Engineering and Operations, described how Burlington Hydro (BHI), a distribution utility with 65,500 customers, has evolved from a point solution environment to an integrated, secure, and real-time utility.  As is typical of many distribution utilities, BHI was facing increased technology sophistication, the need integrated business workflows (operations, engineering, customer engagement, financial) to improve efficiency.  BHI had to address siloed legacy systems and business processes.  Many industry solution offerings fixed individual problems but were expensive and did not take into account integration and long term data management.  Many “enterprise” offerings in the marketplace were proprietary black box solutions with little flexibility that made BHI feel that it was surrendering control of its data and processes.  One of the major problems BHI identified was the lack of O.T. / I.T. convergence for true enterprise efficiency.   Solutions required quite expensive capital outlay and deployment.  Projects became too big and and bogged down and were unable to address fast paced industry change.  In Ontario some of the larger utilities made significant technology investments, but at the end of the day these projects were extremely expensive, disjointed and largely underutilized (or even abandoned). BHI was also concerned about the infancy of smart grid technology and rapid future changes and didn't want to be tied to an inflexible system as the speed of industry changes accelerated.  BHI was convinced that a sound system architecture had to be based on electric industry standards and was aware that AGSI had been working with EPRI on a real-time platform based on Common Information Model (CIM) and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards.

 

Over the past decade open electric power data model standards have been developed for transmission, distribution, smart substations and other electric power functions.  Worldwide the Common Information Model (CIM) has become the standard for transmission.  CIM is also widely used outside of North America for distribution.  In North America the Multispeak standard is the most widely used distribution data model standard, although CIM is used by larger utilities.  These data models are mature and cover virtually all aspects of electric power utility operations.

CIM was originally developed for standardizing electric utility information exchange.  It was designed by electrical engineers, adopted by the IEC and supported by EPRI and multiple electric utility partners, vendors and organizations.  The IEC, EPRI and partners continue to extend the model to cover asset health, station design, work, smart grid integration, IoT Integration, and network operating protocols.  CIM is able to support all aspects of electrical operations (OMS/DMS), electric analysis / smart grid, distributed energy (DER), work orders, crew management, and assets.  AGSI has implemented the CIM Core, Topology, Wires, & Assets object models in a relational database (Oracle Spatial).  Its implementation represents a real-time network model of the CIM electric system data model and provides a centralized view and interaction with the network in real-time.

 

Today this technology connects and integrates engineering, SCADA, AMI, GIS, load analysis, other smart grid deployments such as EV charging, customer, and asset databases into a single accessible platform and enabled BHI to evolve from a point solution environment to an integrated, secure, and real-time utility.  Real-time data unification provides a basis for transparent workflows and a centralized reliable source of truth enables advanced analytics for optimized investment planning.  An open architecture based on industry standards provides the flexibility to adapt to rapid changes in technology as the smart grid evolves. Real-time information sharing enables faster decision making and increased customer satisfaction via real-time situational awareness about outages and planned work.  Don Guatto believes that it provides the foundation for transactive energy which is looming on every utility's horizon.