Between the Poles

Major benefits realized from ensuring quality geolocation data for utility assets

At the National Rural Electric Coop Assn (NRECA) TechAdvantage Conference in Nashville, Nathan Frisby, GIS Engineer at Big Sandy Rural Electric Coop (RECC), and David Herron of Leidos gave a presentation about their experience implementing a GIS at Big Sandy.that I think would be of interest to any utility that has data quality issues, in other words, most utilities.  Their experience  was particularly notable because Big Sandy is a very small utility with about 13,200 customers and commensurately limited IT resources, but they managed to get the data quality part right. I've blogged on many occasions about the challenge of data quality of location information at utilities. It is a major challenge, and one that the move to smart grid is forcing all utilities to address. Big Sandy  focused not only on ensuring that the location and other data they captured was accurate and up to date, but they implemented business practices to ensure that the high level of data quality is maintained.   

Big Sandy RECC provides electric power services for 13,200 members in an 8 county territory in Kentucky that is too rural to be of interest to the investor owned utilities.  The people in the area got together and formed a coop in 1940.

Collecting location data

The first step in the process they went through was a GPS inventory of everything in the field including meters, poles, transformers, lights, fuses, and so on.  As part of this effort they physically tagged all their poles with a unique serial number.  When they inventoried poles they captured everything on them including transformers, conductors, insulators, cross arms and equipment from other utilities such as the local phone company (joint use).  But they went one step further and noted any problems such as broken cross arms, cracked insulators, or rotten poles. This amounted to a full inventory plus a full field inspection.  One of the reasons this was so successful is that the folks that conducted the inventory were a dedicated team whose sole responsibility was the GPS inventory.  

Another thing they did at the same time that was also critical to down the road was linking customers addresses to meters and meters to transformers.  As I have blogged about, linking customers' addresses to meters is a challenge for many utilities, but it is essential for  many critical applications including outage management.

Maintaining data quality

Their data quality maintenance program is basically a double check system.  The field worker, typically a linesman, records the changes he/she makes on the work order which is returned to the records team.  In addition once a month, a supervisor takes all the completed work orders and goes out in the field and verifies the changes recorded on the work order, looking carefully for any deviations between what he finds in the field and what is recorded on the work order.  Only after that is the asset database updated.

Benefits

Some of the significant benefits that Big Sandy has realized by implementing a GIS with ensured location data quality include,

• Greater resilience - outages are fewer and of shorter duration because reliable location data fro their assets means they can respond faster.  Linesmen non only know exactly where a downed pole is, but also exactly what equipment is on the pole.  Nathan Frisby said he was uncertain whether he would be able to attend the NRECA conference to give his talk because they experienced an ice storm in the beginning of the week.  But he said that their distribution system is so much more reliable now that he was able to make it to the conference.
• Reliable reporting to RUS and FEMA - They found idle transformers, power lines that were not on any paper maps, and duplicate transformer numbers.  For 1500 transformers the data currently in the database was incorrect and had to be corrected.
• Improved disaster response - When they have a storm and get assistance from nearby power utilities, they are able to provide reliable maps to direct the folks from other utilities who are not familiar with the service territory to poles and other assets that need servicing.
• Fewer truck rolls to respond to 811 One Call Center - They were able to reduce the number of truck rolls because they know precisely where all their assets was and often did not have to roll a truck.

Perhaps the most telling benefit is how it has improved their ability to report after a disaster to FEMA.  For example, after an ice storm in 2012 that fortuitously had hit an area they had GPS inventoried some time prior to the storm, it helped them report accurately their claims for damages to FEMA.  When the FEMA inspector visited them to verify their claims, she randomly selected 12 poles and then asked to go out in the field to visit those 12 poles to verify that what was recorded on the work orders corresponded to the work that had actually been done on the assets.  After visiting three poles and comparing the very detailed information that Big Sandy had recorded, she was so impressed with the accuracy and detail, she said that this was the most detailed and reliable data she had seen and she didn't need to visit any more poles.  Very impressive!

I would also add that the high quality of their spatial data means they are well prepared for smart grid.

North American smart grid market forecasted to shift from hardware to software

According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance global smart grid investment was up by about 5% in 2013 compared to 2012.

• 2013 $14.9 billion
• 2012 $14.2 billion

In 2013 for the first time China was the leader in smart grid investment ahead of the U.S.

• China $4.3 billion
• U.S. $3.6 billion

Investment in smart grid is forecasted to remain strong.  Asian and European markets are expected to drive growth through 2020, while in North America spending will shift from hardware to software as utilities look to big data management and analytics to convert increasing volumes of data to actionable information.

Smart meter deployment

Smart metering accounted for just under half of the total smart grid spending worldwide in 2013.  China led in the number of smart meters installed in 2013.  China installed 62 million smart meters in 2013 for a total of 250 million.  Europe has only installed 55 million smart meters but this is expected to increase rapidly over the next few years to reach 180 million by 2020.   Spain has a large scale delopyment underway.  The UK, France and Germany are planning large scale smart meter deployments starting in 2015.  Brazil's smart meter deployment is being delayed.  Japan is on the verge of a large scale deployment.  In the U.S. smart meter deployment is slowing down as ARRA funding runs out.

Distribution automation

Global spending on distribution automation which includes self-healing networks and conservation voltage regulation (CVR) or Volt/VAR  increased by 23% over 2012.

• 2013 $5.4 billion
• 2012 $4.4 billion

Future smart grid investment

Bloomberg New Energy Finance sees the following developments in 2014 and beyond:

• Smart meter deployment in China will slow down, but investment in distribution automation will increase.
• Smart grid activity in Japan, Korea, India and South East Asia will ramp up.
• The US is entering a second major smart grid phase of information integration. This involves  applying "big data" management and analytics to leverage the increasing volumes of data coming from smart meters and other smart devices to reduce non-technical losses and improve outage management.

Maryland's Utility 2.0 proposes "utility of the future" business model

In response to a recommendation from the Governor’s Task Force on Grid Resiliency to “scope out a Utility 2.0 pilot proposal", the Energy Future Coalition (EFC) prepared recommendations for a smart grid pilot project that would address key business objectives including eliability and resiliency, residential customer empowerment, large customer flexibility, infrastructure upgrading, a regulatory framework for the smart grid, and a new utility business model that would keep utilities financially viable even as they delivered less electric power.  EFC's "Utility 2.0" recommendations include

• Utility investment in an interoperable, integrated suite of smart-grid technologies, for the utility's own system, but also on customer sites.  This would include time-of-use rates, automated demand response, conservation voltage regulations and other technolgies.
• Allowing utilities to provide low-cost loans to consumers to finance new technology to be repaid by customers on their utility bills.
• Automated system sectionalizing and reclosing (self-healing networks)
• Support for micro-grids in areas where customers could safely provide their own energy during an outage.
• Utility-controlled vehicle battery charging.

Utility of the future

But the key recommendation is a proposal for a new utility business model that would decouple utility revenue from selling electric power.  EFC is proposing that a set of five performance parameters measured through objective metrics would be used to vary the utility’s rate of return on equity by up to one percent above or below the current rate of return determined by the regulator. The performance parameters would be: cost, reliability, customer service, adoption of smart grid technologies and services, and support for alternate energy.

EFC is proposing that the relative weighting of these five factors would be determined by customers’ own rankings of their relative importance. This would provide utilities with a geographically detailed understanding of their customers’ priorities, and a direct incentive to serve those priorities. It would also encourage a potentially mutually beneficial utility-customer dialog.

EPRI GIS Interest Group focuses on accurate geolocation representation of the power distribution system for smart grid

One of the things that has struck me after a number of years travelling and visiting utilities and telecoms world wide is the similarity of the process used to design and manage utility and telecommunications networks, not only across different geographies but across different sectors, power, water, waste water, gas, cable, and telecom.  The basic process for designing and managing a network is essentially the same the world over.  So we are seeing the same problems the world over.

Utilities and telecommunications companies are facing the same global challenges that other sectors such as construction are, global climate change which is forcing utilities to reduce carbon emissions, aging infrastructure,  an aging and shrinking workforce which is motivating efforts to improve productivity, and perhaps most importantly in the last two or three years the transformation of the electric power grid to a modern smart grid, or perhaps more accurately, a smarter grid.

My top six challenges that the smart grid are bringing to a head are

1. Improving Design Productivity

Design productivity has become critical as a result of the aging and shrinking workforce which means that organizations need to do more with less.  Organizations are losing experienced designers to retirement faster than they can replace them with younger inexperienced workers.  This means that they are not only facing reduced headcount, but also fewer experienced workers..

2. Improving flow of design information between field staff and the records department

The field staff are often frustrated by the poor quality of the facilities maps they receive with their work orders. They are also frustrated by business processes that more often than not discourage field workers from providing valuable information back to records about inaccuracies they observe in the field or about changes they have made.

3. Resolving the as-built problem

One of the major challenges in utilities and telecoms face is the “as-built” problem. A symptom of this problem that can be found in utilities and telecoms is an as-built backlog, comprised of as-builts returned from construction that are waiting to be entered into the records database.  These backlogs, which can stretch from several months to years, mean that the records database is always out-of-date making it difficult to provide reliable information about network facilities to the field, management, and the regulator. 

4. Eliminating redundant data

Another problem is data redundancy.  A well-known Gartner study found that the same pole data was being maintained independently by nine different groups in the same utility.

5. Improving the quality of the facilities database

There are several dimensions to the data quality issue including geolocation, connectivity (what is connected to what and phase), current state of the equipment, maintenance history, and financial records.  Poor data quality has serious implications for the organization such as unreliable reports prepared for management and for regulators, which can lead to massive fines such as though seen in the water industry in the UK, negative impacts on the productivity of field staff with the concomitant impact on the bottom line, lengthening the time required to respond to outages, and inhibiting the rapid deployment of new services because the design data critical for servicability calculations used to customer access to services such as broadband, cable, or power is either not available or unreliable.  Some telcos, for example, found that the quality of their databases was so poor that they had to send crews to the field to recapture the facilities data that is critical for determining broadband serviceability.

A directly related example of the geolocation aspect of this problem is our lack of reliable information about the geoocation of underground infrastructure, which is estimated to cost the economy billions.

6. Reducing paper flow

One of the things that leap out of diagrams of the flow of engineering design data in utilities and telecoms like the one I have included is the problem of islands of technology (CAD, GIS, ...) connected by paper-based information flows.  For example, in many organizations the as-built problem is the direct result of paper flow, paper as-builts coming back from construction are redigitized into the records database.  Organizations in all sectors are looking to reduce the flow of paper, not only as part of a green initiative to save trees, but also because paper flows result in data  and process redundancy, inhibit productivity, and impair the agility of the organization.  Organizations have looked at what has happened in the banking industry, airline industry, and web-based retail, and can see the benefits of reducing paper-based information flows.

Brazil's electricity regulator mandates geospatial data quality

Brazil's electric power regulator ANEEL defined a set of guidelines to achieve three major smart grid objectives.   One of them targets accurate geolocation as essential for the Brazilian smart grid.

• Requires utilities to supply precise geographic information about the location of cables, transformers and customer metering points.  This will improve asset management in a number of ways, one of which is to reduce the duration of outages by being able to locate and repair or replace failed equipment faster.

This effort to improve the quality of geolocation information about electric power facilities is not new.  It has been underway in Brazil for some time.  I blogged about it in 2009.  At that time ANEEL had promulgated guidelines that required power utility facilities database to achieve 95% (at least that is what I heard) accuracy by 2010.  In Brazil this has been a compelling event that motivated power utilities to invest in technology to optimize business processes for data quality in order to achieve the goal of a reliable representation of their distribution network.  This regulation put Brazil in a position to have one of the most reliable digital models of its network infrastructure in the world.  It also provides what ANEEL sees as a prerequisite for the Brazilian smart grid.

EPRI's GIS Interest Group focus on accurately representating the power distribution system

So I was very happy to see that the focus of the Electric Power Research Institute's (EPRI) Geospatial Information System (GIS) Interest Group is data quality, specifically relating to the geolocation of grid facilities, a topic which has gotten a lot of attention on this blog over the years. It is intended to be a forum for utilities to explore methods of improving GIS data quality by sharing with each other and participating in EPRI sponsored research. With the advent of AMI, DMS, and the Smart Grid, distribution companies can no longer ignore poor data quality.  EPRI has found that in many cases, utilities are finding that their capital intensive smart grid investments are not yielding anticipated benefits simply because the utility does not have an adequately accurate representation of the distribution system.  EPRI goes on to say that in more extreme cases, the safety of employees and the public has been compromised due to misrepresented facilities in the GIS.

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) conducts research relating to the generation, delivery and use of electric power. It has over a 1000 members worldwide, primarily electric power utilities but also vendors, government organizations, and others.  EPRI supports a number of special focus groups including Metering and AMI, Smart Grid EA, and others.

From EPRI's perspective, GIS quality issues are primarily related to:

• Gaps - key data is missing
• Data redundancies - the same data is captured and maintained in many systems
• Out of date “as-builts”  - untimely work order completion / backlog
• Inaccuracies with the field - the GIS has data but it is so reliable, that the field staff don't use it
• Unreliable land-base - varying degrees of accuracy of land-base data
• Connectivity - transformer to customer phase is unknown or unreliable
• Data model - GIS model itself allows for “bad” data.

I couldn't agree more.  This overlaps with most of my 6 points.  I am very optimistic that this issue, the problem of creating and maintaining an accurate representation of the distribution system, is finally going to get the attention it deserves - under the impetus of the smart grid transformation.

Balancing distributed generation and demand when renewable sources exceed 20 % of total demand

Renewable energy sources like solar and wind power are being used more and more worldwide, while the market share of conventional power stations is decreasing. Wind and solar are intermittent sources of power and balancing these power sources and consumer demand becomes a serious challenge when intermittent  reperesent more than about 20% of total demand.  For example, distributed generation with many small sources of power feeding energy at medium and low voltage levels can reverse the load flows from lower to higher voltage levels.  In addition the greater distances between where power is generated and consumed require increased transmission capacities.

All of these changes affect the provision of system services which balance supply and demand. For example, conventional power stations not only provide most of the balancing energy required in the system, but the inertia of their generators also guarantees the provision of instantaneous reserves for immediate frequency support. Other important system services include voltage maintenance, operation management and re-establishment of power supply.

The decision to shutdown its nuclear power plants in favour of renewable energy (and increased use of coal) is fundamentally changing the supply of energy in Germany.  In the first six months of 2012 according to BDEW, Germany produced 67.9 billion kWh of renewable energy, about 25 % of Germany's total power production. And this trend is accelerating.  This represents an increase of 19.5 % over the same period last year.  (Wind energy accounted for 9.2 %, biomass 5.7 % and solar 5.3 % of total energy output.)

Transmission line buildout

Germany’s transmission-system operators have proposed four high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines that would ship power from northern wind turbines to the south, which is more reliant on nuclear energy. In 2011.  The estimated €10 billion project is already underway. The project would start with the southern half of a 1000-megawatt, 660-kilometer line called Corridor A from the North Sea port of Emden where there are offshore wind farms under construction around Borkum Island to an AC grid hub about 70 km northwest of Stuttgart. Image IEEE Spectrum

Balancing distributed intermittent generation and demand

To address the challenge of balancing generation and demand with increasing intermittent energy sources distributed over larger areas, the Deutsche Energie-Agentur GmbH (dena) - the German Energy Agency - has commissioned a study to be led by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christian Rehtanz, Technical University Dortmund/ef.Ruhr to determine the scope of grid system services in the context of an increasing supply of intermittent energy.  In particular, the study will look into the extent to which distribution grids can contribute to grid stability for the transmission grid, and the role renewable energy systems, storage facilities and demand-side management need to play to esnure grid stability and resilience. The results of the study are expected by the end of 2013.

Distributech 2013: Smart grid becomes mainstream

If there was one consistent message at Distributech this year, it was that smart grid has become mainstream - every utilty is doing something related to smart grid.

A very good example of some the things that utilities are abe to do because of their investment in smart grid technology is the keynote given by Michael Niggli, COO and President of San Diego Gas and Electric Company (SDGE).  SDG&E is a regulated public utility with 3.4 million customers and 1.4 million electric meters and more than 840,000 natural gas meters in San Diego and southern Orange counties.

Smart grid

According to Mr. Niggli smart grid is accelerating like never before.  SDG&E has deployed 2.3 million smart meters to electric and gas consumers. And there are other smart-grid related initiatives that SDG&E has undertaken including distributed generation, primarily solar photvoltaic (PV), plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs), and a new outage management system that leverages real-time data from smart meters..

Social networking and customer engagement

Having smart meters has helped in a way that SDG&E probably didn't originally project.  When SDG&E had to take the San Onofre nuclear plant, which represents 20% of their generation capacity, off-line in January 2012, they had to look for ways to dramatically reduce load.  SDG&E leveraged their smart meter network to help reduce power demand.  I have blogged before about utilities using social networking to communicate with the public.  In this case one of the ways that SDG&E took advantage of their AMI network was to use social networking to help reduce load.  The smart meter network (AMI) allowed them to  compare different schools' power usage so they used social gaming to create a competition among schools to see who could reduce their energy usage the most.

Green button

Another area where SDGE and a number of other utilities are helping consumers become more energy consciousus is the Green Button program, originally modeled on Veteran Affairs' Blue Button program.  SDGE's Green Button program not only allows users to access their own usage data, but also to make it available to 3rd parties, typically companies who analyze consumers' historical usage to help them reduce their power usage.  Across the country about 16 million consumers have access to their electric usage data via a Green Button program and another 30 mllion are exptected to get access soon.

Distributed generation

California is leading the country in clean energy.  California has mandated 33% renewable energy by 2020, and has also mandated reducing emissions to 1990 levels, by about 30% from current levels, in the same timeframe.  In addition new federal regulations targeting 54.5 miles per gallon in all new vehicles by 2025 is dramatically changing the energy landscape in California.  And as Mr. Niggli and other speakers emphasized, what is happening to utilities in Califiornia will happen to utilities in the rest of the country.

Distributed generation is an important source of renewable energy for SDGE.  According to Mr. Niggli In SDG&E's service territory there are 21'000 rooftop PV installations with a capacity of 160 MW.  New rooftop PV installations  are increasing at a rate of 3% per month.

Plug-in electric vehicles

Presently there are 2'500 plug-in electric vehicles in San Diego currently and SDGE is projecting that this could rise to 200'000 by 2020.  SDGE has used time of use pricing to motivate PEV owners to charge at super off peak when electricity is at a very low rate.  As a result 84% of vehicle charging is occuring between 12 midnight and 5am.

Wind and solar intermittent energy sources changes the daily demand profile

When intermiitent sources like wind and solar generation contribute more than about 20%, they begin to significantly impact the daily generation profile.  On the demand side, plug-in electric vehicles and increasing customer awareness of electric usage are changing daily load profiles.  The difference between the two is critically important to SDGE because they need to provide generation capacity to fill the gap.   Mr. Niggli gave two examples from the Californi ISO where generation dropped by 4'500 MW in 2 hrs, and then ramped up by 12'500 MW in 2.5 hrs, as a result of wind and solar generation.

SDG&E expects to start seeing the impact of the new daily power profile in 2015 and is working now to find dispatchable energy sources that can ramp up and down rapidly.  To put this in context, it takes months to ramp up nuclear, weeks for coal-fired plants, minutes for hyroelectric and natural-gas turbines, and microseconds for batteries.

Wild fires

Wild fires are a big problem for SDG&E because that makes SDGE liable for damage caused by fires started by SDGE equipment, for example, by poles being blown over. 

SDGE has implemented 144 weather stations to monitor local weather conditions in their service territory.  If winds get too high in an area increasign the risk of dmage to poles and other equipment, SDG&E will proactively shut down part of the network.  They have also put cameras on transmission lines and nstalled software that can automatically detect fires on transmission lines.

Outage management leveraging smart meters

SDG&E has installed a new outage management system that leverages their 2.3 million smart meters.  The major advantage that the new system provides is that they can detect an outage before the first customer calls in.  They can also differentiate without rolling a truck between outages due to customer problems and those caused by their own network.  The net effect is that it reduces the number of outages that SDG&E needs to respond to and reduces the average outage time (CAIDI and SAIDI).

New technologies can mitigate nationwide power grid blackouts like India's

Monday of this week about 370 million people experienced a power outage, though because outages are common in many parts of India, critical facilities like the Delhi Indira Gandhi airport, hospitals and police stations, and large commercial and industrial users had backup generators.

Then, on Tuesday, there was a 20-state blackout that cut power for between 620 and 680 million people, by far the largest blackout in history.  Only about 40 percent of power was back up by mid-afternoon on Tuesday.  At this point it is not clear what the cause of the outage was, but power grids are complex and this will take time.  I remember that it took months to determine what caused the Northeast power outage of 2003.

In some countries the grid is becoming much more flexible as a result of smart grid and distributed power generation technologies.  New technologies make it possible to restore power faster, track outages and restoration in real-time, and isolate sub-grids ("intentional islanding"), even at the home level, which can be kept them going with local power sources when the central grid goes down.  Home networks that incorporate renewable energy sources and power storage batteries enable homes to function off the grid.  In countries like Bengladesh with a limited central power grid, a significant amount of electric power is completly local and not connected to a central grid, which means that these power users are unaffected by a nation wide outage.

Monitoring outages and restoration

April of last year thirty tornados hit Alabama Power's operating area completely destroying two substations, flattening transmission pylons, breaking 7500 poles, and leaving 400,000 cutomers without power.  Fortunately, Alabama Power had installed more than a million smart meters in its service area.

By looking for smart meters that were read the day before and comparing them with the meters that could not be read after the tornados, Alabama Power was able to put together a detailed map of where power had been lost, without making telephone calls, which is what utilities normally do in such cases.  They could also tell emergency response officials whether the power was on or off in specific buildings - critical information that first responders need before entering a damaged building.  In addition, they could also track power restoration trends as customers started coming back on-line. The smart grid may not be able to prevent an outage caused by this type of event, but it can help get power restored faster and more safely.

The University of Tennessee Power Information Technology Laboratory has used a network of small, low-cost devices that plug into wall outlets to show the electric system dynamics of the Western Interconnect during the San Diego blackout in September of this year.  The devices record frequency, phase angle, and voltage every few seconds and transmit the data via the internet to the University of Tennessee and Virginia Tech. GPS-synchronization of the network made it possible to show geographically how the system disturbance propagated.

Intentional islanding

The combination of an intermittent energy source like solar or wind together with a large electric power storage battery (a 36 MWh battery park was recently commissioned in China) represents a source of power that could function independently of the central grid and provide power to a local community.  Intentional islanding can be used during a widespread outage like that in India to create power islands which can be designed to maintain a continuous supply of power locally during disturbances to the central grid.   Critical facilities like airports and hospitals already employ a form of islanding, taking themselves off the central grid and using emergency backup generators.

Home energy management

A large manufacturer, Panasonic Corporation, has announced that it will start mass-production of a lithium-ion battery energy storage system for homes, specifically for the European residential market.

The battery system consists of a battery cell with a capacity of up to 1.35 kWh and a battery management system designed to control battery charging and discharging.  When the sun is shining the battery stores energy generated from solar photovoltaic (PV) panels. At night when the PV system is not generating power, the battery provides up to a kWh of power.

Decentralized electric power

In Bangladesh, renewable energy, primarily solar, is providing access to electricity for rural villagers, who are not likely to have access to the central grid in the near future.  The Globle Environment Facility (GEF) is helping to accelerate rural electrification through solar home systems (SHS) in rural areas where people live too far from the main electrical grids. The Renewable Energy and Rural Electrification project seeks to reduce barriers to the use of these climate friendly energy systems and grow the market for renewables.  Currently it is estimated that some 80,000 SHSs are installed each month and in the last seven years, over 1 million rural homes in off-grid areas have got electricity through SHSs.  Since SHSs are entirely off-grid, they are not affected by nationwide outages like that in India earlier this week.