Between the Poles

Grid resilience demands we understand our infrastructure above and below ground

Jay Cadman, SVP Enterprise, IQGeo

As the glue interlinking everything from the industrial ‘Internet of Things’ to smart grids and underpinning the real-time social and economic services of the future, full fiber and 5G is increasingly recognized as an essential national utility. With superfast broadband forming the enabling technology for social and economic progress, any outages could have an equally devastating effect to power or water shortages. Europe is already pioneering ways of improving infrastructure’s resilience to climate change. This is becoming increasingly critical as superfast broadband faces a more distributed, fluctuating and unpredictable threat landscape than ever before.

Full-fiber cables are vulnerable to underground water while 5G will move radio signals to even higher frequencies where they are more susceptible to weather interference. For example, Hurricane Sandy damaged Verizon’s Northeast network and some basement-level communications hubs, while in 2018 Hurricane Michael caused major flood damage to underground fiber-optic cables in Florida. Achieving resilience across the telecoms sector will mean understanding the complex intersection of infrastructure above and below ground. Future fixed and mobile connectivity networks will all be 5G so that everything from underground fiber cables to radio waves will need to be managed as a single interconnected ecosystem above and below ground. Knowing the location of all infrastructure will be critical to understanding where all our fiber optic cables and 5G antennae intersect with the people and places that will need them. It is also vital to understand the common vulnerabilities that could produce a single point of failure affecting multiple overground and underground networks. Infrastructure planners will need to know the location of 5G networks in relation to nearby threats and hazards. Hazard data may even need to be shared with rival telecoms operators and authorities to ensure common resilience across the sector.

The Data Gap

This presents a major challenge because many telcos do not have current, comprehensive data on overground and underground assets in an integrated, easily accessible and shareable format. Many current systems fail to fully capture live insights from both workforce and network assets. Network data is rarely held in a modern, mobile-friendly format which is accessible to field workers or contractors. Many networks do not link all network data with location, which is critical to understanding risks in all regions of their network. Smaller operators are frequently not documenting their network in a digital SoR (System of Record). All too often, network data is not only siloed within an organization, but also incompatible with external datasets such as meteorological or ecological satellite data. This also means it cannot easily be shared with other organizations or authorities to help combat common vulnerabilities and ensure sector-wide resilience.

For example, there are 3.4 million miles of underground infrastructure including data lines and fiber-optic cables in the UK alone, yet there is no up-to-date or integrated map of this subterranean labyrinth. This makes it impossible to achieve common resilience against underground threats such as flooding or to see how other present or planned underground utility infrastructure might pose hazards to telecoms networks.

To help prioritize critical services and customers for maintenance or upgrades, operators need comprehensive and current location-based information on underground fiber-optic networks in relation to all the critical settlements and services that depend on them. Similarly, without a single map of infrastructure above ground, operators cannot predict how local weather might affect antennae.

In a pioneering example of what could be achieved, London is working with companies to create a combined mobile-friendly map of its subterranean infrastructure where the site and source of hazards in relation to overground services can be swiftly identified.

Achieving resilience

Telecoms’ unpredictable, varied, and fluctuating threat landscape means operators must now go beyond reactive risk management and recovery and adopt forward thinking and predictive network resilience. Creating resilient 5G networks will require a holistic overview of the site and the source of potential threats across overground and underground infrastructures. Crucially, all fixed and mobile networks will need to be managed as an interconnected ecosystem regardless of the location of physical infrastructure. Key to this challenge is the ability to combine data from multiple sources and harness all of a network’s assets as a source of real-time threat intelligence. This means adopting geospatial information systems capable of capturing a wide array of network data from employee smartphones to IoT sensors and matching it with precise and accurate location data to reveal the locus and the solution for every problem anywhere in the network. Accurate SoRs and ‘as-builts’ are critical to ensuring a comprehensive and current risk overview across all infrastructure and effectively targeting mitigation strategies, from repositioning antennae away from threats to replacing copper wire with fiber-optic cable. Matching all telecoms data with location data is essential to contextualizing threats, revealing interdependencies with neighboring infrastructure that could create shared vulnerabilities, and identifying priority customers or communities to protect. Using open platforms capable of integrating network information with external sources is also vital to allowing important information to be shared with authorities or other operators. This also allows network data to be merged with relevant external sources of risk intelligence such as weather or vegetation data.

Below I have outlined some steps companies can take to create data-driven resilient grids.

Step 1: Democratize network data

Operators must devolve responsibility for updating network information across the workforce, from field technicians to office managers. This involves harnessing open, mobile-friendly geospatial information platforms that can capture information from a decentralized array of sources, from IoT sensors to field worker smartphones. As-builts and systems of record should be digitized and easily accessible to workers on the ground who can ensure they stay accurate and up to date. This empowers workers, creating a sense of collective responsibility for network intelligence and resilience. Opening up network data should also extend to the use of open APIs to integrate location-based network data with important information from external sources such as weather hazard data.

Step 2: Risk assessment and resilience

Assess the network to identify and remove systemic vulnerabilities and single points of failure. Since all fixed and mobile networks will ultimately be 5G, organizations must ensure they have integrated, comprehensive and current geospatial information on all infrastructure above and below ground so they can easily identify threats. Companies should be creating network-wide digital ‘dashboards’ tracking live, location-based intelligence revealing the site and source of hazards such as storms or cyber-attacks. Operators must ensure they can capture live information from any device in the field, and that their network location data is accurate and up-to-date, so they can take rapid remedial action or mitigate risks specific to each region. Virtualization of networks also means the equipment itself can indicate risk or damage and this can be matched with location data to create a digital twin of networks that encourages more agile, adaptable risk management.

Step 3: System resilience & security

Whether organizations adopt third-party cloud environments or bring this in-house, they must support geographic resilience, system redundancy, and the latest advances in cyber security. Critical network software must ensure data is duplicated and encrypted to drastically lower the likelihood of singular points of failure.

Step 4: Incident response

Have a company-wide damage assessment and incident response strategy, both to preempt current threats and to provide insights which can be used to predict and prevent future risks. Organizations should start by creating a live, location-based overview of damage, degradation, or hazards to the network across both overground to underground infrastructure. Incorporating this data into incident reports not only helps create more rapid and even predictive maintenance of networks, but also encourages a proactive and predictive risk management model that can draw on past incidents to inform future solutions. For example, data on regions at risk of flooding can be used to protect nearby fiber-optic cables but also to inform planning of future networks that mitigates identified risks. In this way, networks grow collectively stronger and smarter from every incident.

Step 5: Practice

Stress-test systems, people, and processes with regular rehearsals to ensure resilience is drilled into all company procedures, workers, and systems. Just as companies perform health and safety training, they should test and train all assets for network resilience. This will ensure that best practice is baked into the organization.

The threats facing the telecoms industry today are constantly changing, extreme weather and other recent trends pose the threat of a ‘black swan event’ that affects entire systems of networks. However, by digitizing and decentralizing network data and creating proactive resilience strategies, telecoms organizations can take control. As 5G networks increasingly comprise a mix of networks and infrastructures above and below ground, the key is to integrate live data from all assets and manage telecoms grids holistically as a single living ecosystem. It is vital that network geospatial systems are a ‘living document’ constantly drawing on live intelligence from the field.

Contributed article by Jay Cadman, SVP Enterprise, IQGeo

 

Ofwat mandates game changer by making water utilities responsible for 3rd party damage to infrastructure

The recent PR19 comprehensive price review of the water industry by Ofwat, the economic regulator of the water sector in England and Wales has targeted an aggressive "reducing leakage by 15% within base costs" and provides financial motivation to water industry to improve the quality of its asset data.  This has been motivated by Ofwat's observation that "over the past two decades, despite material technological progress, the sector has achieved little overall reduction in leakage" 

Currently water utilities suffer financial penalties for customer lost minutes from failure of the company’s assets or unplanned interruptions. PR19 extends financial penalties for water companies to cover failures caused by third parties.  This is a game changer  for how the water sector operates because it provides strong financial motivation to water utilities to reduce damage during 3rd party excavation.  As Richard Broome of LinesearchBeforeUDig (LSBUD) put it in a recent article in WWT,  "One area of particular focus with PR19 is asset resilience ... It now treats asset failures caused by third parties in the same way as any other failure of the company’s assets or unplanned interruptions, and the financial penalties that result from customer lost minutes can be considerable."

The implications of this regulatory ruling is that water companies will be financially motivated to increase investment in improving the quality of their location and other data for their underground network assets.  They will also be motivated to find ways to make this data accessible to excavators, possibly through Digdat (Anglian Water Services) , LSBUD, or another sharing service.  Water utilities will need to address the issue of ensuring reliable as-builts are captured for newly installed water assets.  They will also need to find ways to improve the quality of their location data for existing assets, which is a major challenge because some water assets were put in the ground in the 17th Century.

Growing gap in electric power infrastructure investment in the U.S. will decrease reliability and resilience of the grid

Last week the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) released a new report in the Failure to Act series "Electric Infrastructure Investment Gaps in a Rapidly Changing Environment" that estimates the investment gap through 2039 for electric power infrastructure in the U.S. and assesses the impact of under investment in electric power infrastructure on the U.S. economy.  Modern economies are increasingly dependent on "chip technologies" powered by electricity. Recent projections suggest that ICT consumption of electricity could reach over 20% of total demand by 2030 with data centres consuming over a third of that.  It is estimated that the average cost of an outage at a data centre is about $8,851 for every minute the electricity grid is disrupted,

Background

Just about everything that we use daily from phones and the internet to water and wastewater rely on electric power. In addition as we reduce the carbon footprint of the economy, electric power becomes increasingly important because in most jurisdictions electric power has a low or decreasing carbon footprint compared to other sources of energy.

The U.S. electric power grid is composed of the bulk power system including large-scale generation facilities and the transmission network. 10,000 power plants comprise the generation capacity of the U.S., not including residential solar panels or small-scale wind farms.  More than 600,000 circuit miles of transmission lines, of which 240,000 are high-voltage, carry power from generation plants to the distribution nrtworks. An estimated 5.5 million miles of local distribution lines (including underground cables) carry the power to end users.

Increased ICT consumption of electricity

One of the sectors that is projected to consume an increasing share of the U.S. electricity supply is information and communications technology (ICT).  Currently it is estimated that the share of electric power consumption by ICT is between 5 and 9% of total power demand. Currently  ICT’s electricity consumption has plateaued.  Increasing load from growing Internet traffic and chip technologies has been balanced by increased efficiencies. But this may change in the next few years. Forecasts suggest that the total electricity demand by information and communications technology (ICT) will accelerate and that of the ICT pie data centres will take a larger slice. The chart shows an "expected case" projection which shows that ICT consumption of electricity could reach over 20% of total demand by 2030.  ICT requires a reliable and resilient power grid and will be one of the most important drivers to address the gap in investment in electric power.

A related aspect of the U.S. economy is a structural shift away from energy intensive industries such as heavy manufacturing. A measure of this is energy intensity which is the amount of energy that is required to produce one dollar of GDP.  In 1980 12,100 BTUs were required to create one dollar of GDP.  By 2014 this had declined to 6,100 BTUs per dollar. About 40 percent of the improvement in energy intensity was attributed to structural shifts, and the remainder to improved efficiency.

Gap in investment in electric power

Over the period 2011-2020 demand growth estimated at about 8% has been net with increased generation capacity. But for the period 2021-2040 the report projects increasing divergence between demand and capacity. If current trends are projected into the future the U.S. is facing a $208 billion (in 2019 dollars) shortfall by 2029 and a $338 billion shortfall by 2039 in what is needed to ensure a reliable energy system.  Most of this shortfall is attributed to under investment in generation and transmission. For transmission the largest challenge is not so much attracting investment in transmission, but that regulatory approval from all levels of government averages about 10 years for a new transmission line and can amount to 50% of the cost. Unlike Germany where the Bundesnetzagentur has national authority over long distance transmission lines, for bringing wind power from the North Sea to the south, for example, in the U.S. states are the top level regulatory authorities for transmission lines and a rule of thumb that has emerged is that to build a transmission line as rapidly as possible, don't cross state boundaries.  The demand for new transmission is exacerbated by the growing sources of renewable energy generation in the West that require new transmission lines to bring the power to the East and the Pacific Coast.

Impact on the economy

For consumers electricity system outages, voltage surges, and brownouts represent a direct cost to their households and businesses, and indirectly through impacts on the national economy. It is estimates that the cost to residential customers from each electric interruption event was $6.68 (2018 dollars).   This is about twice as high as it was five years earlier partly because or our increasing reliance on chip technologies in out daily lives.

When the grid fails businesses experience downtime, lost labour and productivity.  The report found that outages have the biggest impact in the manufacturing sector, costing almost $42,000 per event on average in 2008. As a result of the growing importance of ICT, data centres have become essential for many different industries. It is estimated that the average cost of an outage for a data centre increased from $505,000 in 2010 to $740,000 in 2016, or about $8,851 for every minute the electricity grid is disrupted.

Furthermore, disruptions to the grid add to costs and can result in U.S. manufactured products becoming less competitive in international markets. Between 2020 and 2039, it is estimated that the gap in investment in electric power will result in the loss of $271 billion in the value of U.S. exports.  In addition businesses and households will have to pay an additional $142 billion for foreign imports.

Low carbon climate-resilient infrastructure requires private funding

A Report by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate has recommended that since more than 60% of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are sourced from the world's existing stock of infrastructure, ensuring infrastructure is built to deliver sustainability is the only way to meet the COP21 goal  of keeping warming below 2°C and to guarantee long-term, inclusive and resilient growth. Infrastructure underpins core economic activity and is an essential foundation for achieving inclusive sustainable growth.  Investing in sustainable infrastructure is key for reigniting global growth and reducing climate risk.

The Global Commission is chaired by former President of Mexico Felipe Calderón and co-chaired by the climate economist Lord Nicholas Stern.

The report estimates that $90 trillion in sustainable infrastructure investment will be required over the next 15 years.  It stresses that this will require a shift in the world's construction and financial sectors to ensure that this money, which will be increasingly private, is spent on low-carbon, energy-efficient projects. 

Change in infrastructure spending required for a 2°C scenario (percentage change in expenditure over 2015-2030 compared to Business-as-usual)

The report has adopted a broad definition of infrastructure which includes both traditional types of infrastructure; energy, public transport, buildings, water supply, and sanitation and also natural infrastructure; forest landscapes, wetlands and watershed protection.  Infrastructure underpins core economic activity and is an essential foundation for achieving inclusive sustainable growth. It is indispensable for development and poverty elimination, as it enhances access to basic services, education and work opportunities, and can boost human capital and quality of life.

Investment is needed to replace ageing infrastructure in advanced economies and to accommodate higher growth and structural change in emerging market and developing countries. This will require a significant increase globally, from the estimated US$3.4 trillion per year currently invested in infrastructure to about US$6 trillion per year. The Global Commission found that it does not need to cost much more to ensure that this new infrastructure is compatible with climate goals, and the additional up-front costs can be fully offset by efficiency gains and fuel savings over the infrastructure lifecycle.

Importance of private infrastructure financing

Transforming the financial system and its intermediaries is essential to scaling up sustainable infrastructure finance.  Public finance and investment will continue to play a critical role, particularly in low-income countries.  But large amounts of private capital are needed and this will only flow if the right market signals are present within the financial system. The report suggests that reforms are needed in the financial regulatory system as well as other policy reforms, specifically, to price carbon to level the playing field between sustainable and unsustainable options in order to encourage private investment in sustainable infrastructure.

Private investment requires financial returns.  Efficiency in construction and operation and maintenance of infrastructure is essential. Increasing productivity drives technological innovation. Many governments as well as private sector engineering and construction firms have identified building information modeling (BIM) as a key foundation for increasing construction productivity.  Owners are beginning to recognize the benefits of full lifecycle BIM especially when augmented by geospatial technology.

Energy

The report estimates that energy infrastructure will require investment of US$25 trillion, or nearly a third of total core infrastructure investment over the coming 15 years. In addition energy efficiency will require investment of about the same magnitude.  Building sustainable energy infrastructure encourages economic growth, reduces air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and plays a key role in building resilience.

Energy efficiency

The report found that energy efficiency is a highly cost-effective way to manage demand and reduce the investment requirements for overall energy supply. Increasing energy efficiency in industry, buildings and transport could achieve up to half of the emission reductions needed globally to peak greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 according to the IEA.  Energy efficiency investments in IEA member countries since 1990 have avoided US$5.7 trillion of energy expenditure.  The IEA estimates further investments could boost global GDP by US$18 trillion by 2035, increasing growth by as much as 1.1% per year.  Energy efficiency measures are estimated to create up to three times as many jobs as fossil fuel supply investments per dollar of investment.

A key recommendation of the Global Commission’s 2015 report was to scale up commitments by development banks working with governments and the private sector to invest at least US$1 trillion per year by 2030 in clean energy, including energy efficiency.

Air pollution

Outdoor air pollution, much of which is associated with fossil fuels, is linked to nearly 4 million premature deaths per year. In China, it is estimated that air pollution killed around 1.6 million people in China in 2013. In India, the air pollution toll in 2013 stood at 1.4 million deaths.  In Europe, coal plant emissions account for more than 18,200 premature deaths, about 8,500 new cases of chronic bronchitis, and over 4 million lost working days each year.  Analysis for the Global Commission shows that the health and mortality burden of air pollution amounts to as much as 4% or more of GDP in some countries. Recent analysis by the OECD has found that globally air pollution-related healthcare costs alone are projected to increase from US$21 billion in 2015 to US$176 billion in 2060.

Cities

It is estimated that by 2050, two-thirds of the global population will live in cities, and over 70% of the global demand for infrastructure over the next 15 years is expected to be in urban areas.  How cities develop is important both for growth and for climate change.  The report emphasizes that investment in sustainable infrastructure is essential to make cities inclusive, safe, and resilient.

Global Commission

The global commission is supported by governmental and private sector leaders: Sharan Burrow, General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Australia; Suma Chakrabarti, President, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD); Helen Clark, Administrator, UN Development Programme (UNDP); Former Prime Minister of New Zealand; Jamshyd Godrej Chairman and Managing Director, Godrej & Boyce Mfg Co. Ltd., India; Stuart Gulliver, Group Chief Executive, HSBC Holdings plc and Chairman of The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited; Angel Gurría, Secretary-General, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD); Chad O. Holliday, Chairman, Shell, United States; and Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Finance Minister of Indonesia

ASCE forecasts $177 billion shortfall in electric grid investment in next decade

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has released Failure to Act: Closing the Investment Gap for America’s Economic Future, which is a 2016 update to 2013 report Failure to Act: The Impact of Infrastructure Investment on America’s Economic Future. The report estimates that there is a $1.4 trillion investment gap in infrastructure in the next decade 2016 to 2025.

Roads, bridges, transit and commuter rail	$1.1 trillion
Electricity	$177 billion
Water and wastewater	$105 billion
Airports	$42 billion
Ports and inland waterways	$15 billion

Most of this gap is in roads, bridges, transit and commuter rail  infrastructure, estimated at $1.1 trillion. Most of the remaining gap lies in electricity ($177 billion) and water and wastewater ($105 billion) infrastructure.

Electric power

Total requirements	$934 billion
Funded	$757 billion
Gap	$177 billion

The average annual investment gap for electric generation, transmission and distribution through 2025 is expected to decrease from $21 billion to $18 billion with a cumulative investment gap of $177 billion through 2025.  This does not include the potential impact of the 2015 Clean Power Plan because court action has deferred the earliest possible implementation to 2017.

The U.S. electric power grid includes 5,800 major power plants and 450,000 miles of transmission lines plus many smaller generation facilities and local distribution lines.  The estimated gap is 22% due to generation, 24% for transmission and 54% for distribution infrastructure.

Generation

Compared to the gap estimate made for the initial Failure to Act series, the cumulative shortfall in funding for generating facilities is expected to be much smaller. This is due to improvements in the availability of generating capacity in the short-term and decreases in the rate of demand growth predicted by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation.

Transmission and distribution

Transmission and distribution are expected to have slightly larger cumulative gaps than the original reports predicted. This is the result of an increasingly decentralized generation network, which requires additional transmission capacity for load balancing and resiliency.

Distribution investments are required to maintain the existing power networks.  Investment is also required to make the grid smarter to increase efficiency, optimize power flows and address growing customer requirements including increasing power being generated by customers.

If the gap is not resolved, the impact is expected to be a loss of reliability in electricity supply. This leads to direct costs to households and businesses. Without significant investments, failure of aging equipment could lead to longer lasting, more widespread losses of power.

Economic impact

Unreliable electricity service carries significant costs associated with power outages. The average outage cost per short-duration power interruption is estimated to be $2,600 to $6,600 for industrial firms and $900 to $1,700 for commercial firms.  As costs to households and businesses associated with service interruptions rise, it is estimated that GDP will fall by a total of $819 billion by 2025 and that the U.S. economy will provide an average of 102,000 fewer jobs than it would otherwise have by 2025.

DistribuTECH2016: Sacramento's power utility transmogrifies itself with innovative governance and analytics

At DistribuTECH Nancy Bui-Thompson, President of Sacramento Municipal Utilities District (SMUD), gave an insightful presentation about her utility from the perspective of an elected official.  I think that Nancy is one of the first examples of an elected official presenting at DistribuTECH.  SMUD is and has been for some time one of the most forward-looking utilities in North America.  It was the first California utility to reach 20% renewable power and the first to commit to 33% renewables.  It is also one of the most energy efficient utiltiies in California.

 

It is governed by an elected board of directors, who are responsible for policy and strategy, and perhaps this is the reason it is very customer focussed and has consistently maintained high customer satisfaction ratings.  For example during the rollout of the smart meter program it maintained an impressive 95% customer satisfaction rating.  The major customer drivers are green, renewable and reliable, and the need for choice.   Nancy emphasized that SMUDs unique governance model reserving policy for the board of directors allows SMUDs management and employees freedom to implement without interference.

 

SMUD is moving from a centralized utility with a business model based on selling electricity to a distributed utility providing localized grid services.  This means SMUD is getting out of the business of selling electricity, and into the business of selling grid services.  

 

At the policy level the focus areas are customer analytics, changing the rate structure and grid analytics.

 

Customer analytics includes collecting operational data on customer behaviour to help identify and provide new services.  For example, these statistics helps identify early adopters, customers who are interested in renewable energy or energy efficiency in the home and who help drive programs focussed on theses areas.  Customer data and analytics also helps with segmentation, defining the different market segments that require different types and levels of grid services.

 

Grid analytics is helping SMUD better manage outages.  Collecing operational data and analyzing it to be able to predict outages has reduced the number of outages by 20% and the average durating of outages by 28%.

 

One of the most interesting innovations at SMUD is in the area of rate structure.  SMUD and other utilities are in the interesting position for a retailer of trying to sell less of its product, in this case electricity.  People are using less electricity as a result of personal interest as well as SMUD's own energy efficiency programs.  But the money has to come from somewhere.  SMUD has introduced a flat infrastructure fee.  Currently every customer pays $18/month for the grid, independent from how much power they consume.   SMUD has determined that $28 is the breakeven point, where the cost of maintaining the grid would be covered by infrastructure fees, and is moving towards that monthly change.

 

Another interesting innovation at SMUD (which I have seen elsewhere) is their solar power program.  Customers can buy into solar power without the bother of having to install solar panels on their roofs.  The first solar program was a 1 MW solar PV program designed for residential customers.  The next will be a an 11 MW program for commercial customers.

Powering up the smart grid with geospatial technology

The electricity industry is undergoing a transformation. With utilities embracing geospatial technology and turning into data driven enterprises in the Smart Grid scenario, the sector is staring at an innovative future.

The National Academy of Engineering identifies the electric power grid as the first of 20 major engineering achievements that has had the greatest impact on the quality of life in the 20th Century. Modern society has reached a point where virtually every crucial economic and social function depends on the secure, reliable operation of electric power infrastructure.  But because it has become so crucial for modern life, it faces major challenges.
   
The major drivers for the fundamental change underway in the electric power industry are increasing demand, universal access, decarbonizing electric power, reducing revenue losses, and grid reliability and resilience.  Some of the  technologies that are contributing to this transformation are intelligent devices integrated with a communications network, distributed renewable power generation especially wind and solar PV, net zero energy buildings, microgrids, and the new remote sensing technologies of subsurface utility engineering.  

For an industry not known historically for rapid change, many utilities are in the midst of transforming themselves into data driven enterprises. Recently IDC published its future predictions for the development of the electric power industry over the period 2015-2018.  For many in the industry these are quite startling and clearly reflect an industry that is rapidly evolving.

The technology roadmap for the smart grid involves the deployment of increasing numbers of intelligent electronic devices for sensing and for control.  The challenge is federating the data from all of these devices, extracting information from it, and dispatching the information to the right control devices. 
 
With the changes that the electric power industry is undergoing now, analysts see geospatial technology poised to become a foundation technology for the smart grid.  The role of utility GIS is expected to touch every aspect of a utilities business, affecting customers, operations and management because geospatial is the logical technology that can provide  the basis for integrating data from intelligent electronic devices such as smart meters and the  information silos associated with proprietary applications.

You can read more about smart grid and relevance of geospatial data and technology, real-time big spatial data, standards for interoperability, the importance of data quality, open source geospatial technology,  spatial analytics and other aspects of the role of geospatial technology in the smart grid in Geospatial World.

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.

Smart grid requires the next generation of convergence: real-time, geospatial and network analytics

At the Space-Time Insight annual SI World conference this year, Dave Haak of Accenture gave a riveting overview of the research that Accenture has conducted on smart grid deployment including a survey of utility executives in Europe and North America.  Some fundamental questions that Dave was able to shed some light on are

1. Is smart grid here to stay or is it a passing fad ? 
2. Is smart grid expected to reduce the cost of maintaining the grid in 2030 ?
3. How do you manage the complexity of the modern distribution grid ?
4. Is the electric power utility industry entering a disruptive phase ?

Managing the smart grid

Dave discussed the complexity of the modern grid which has to support distributed generation including intermittent renewable energy sources like solarPV and wind, energy storage, PEVs,  and potentially microgrids.   Monitoring and managing the modern complex grid is a challenge that traditional tools that have been used for the current grid such as traditional GIS are simply not capable of.  A new "converged" approach that tightly integrates GIS, intelligent grid analytical tools using grid topology (what's connected to what) and visualization, all in real-time, is required.  It needs to integrate traditional IT systems (GIS, CIS, work management, financials, and meter data management) and traditional OT systems (outage management, distribution management, SCADA, and energy management).  Accenture points out that Other industries such as telecommunications, retail and banking have gone through a similar disruptive phase and have applied IT including embedded analytics to transform their business processes to improve productivity.

Is smart grid here to stay ?

98% of respondents in Accenture's executive survey said that smart grid is a natural extension of the ongoing upgrading of the grid.  In other words this is not a flash-in-the-pan fad that will go away.  The evolution of grid operations is going to involve a broad change to how utilities are organized and how they operate.  Accenture predicts that it will require a major overhaul of utility organizations and will affect operational groups, as well as information technology and security.

Staffing the next generation utility

It also requires development of new skills, either through hiring new staff or retraining existing staff.  This is a key part of the challenge.  I have blogged on multiple occasions about the challenge facing the electric power industry as the older generation retires and a younger, but inexperienced workforce takes their place.  Accenture reports that utilities are finding it difficult to staff their workforces with the necessary combination of power engineering and IT skills.

Grid reliability and resilience

As the world becomes more dependent on IT solutions in our daily lives from point of sales to hospital admissions, reliability of the electric power network has become increasingly important.  A few years ago 40% of U.S. power went to chip technologies.  By 2015 this is expected to reach 60%.  Reliability of electric power supply varies significantly among countries.  For example, the duration of outages (SAIDI) in the U.S. is greater than the UK, France, or Italy and much greater in the than Germany.  I was not happy to see that Canada's average outage duration is over twice that of the U.S and 20 times that of Germany.

A major challenge facing utilities as they move to the smart grid is how to achieve better reliability (and reduced emissions) with less cost.  Accenture asked executives whether smart grid would reduce the cost of maintaining the grid in 2030.  72 % of respondents said that that expected that the costs of upgrading/maintaining the grid will be less in 2030 as a result of the adoption of smart grid technologies. 

Smart grid business drivers in different regions

There are significant differences between different regions of the world in the priority business drivers for smart grid deployment. For example, in Brazil and India the primary driver is non-technical losses.  According to the Accenture survey in North America the primary drivers for smart grid are improving grid reliability and outage response.  In Europe where climate change is taken more seriously, distributed generation and support for renewables are priorities.

Increasing competition from microgeneration

Accenture's view is that the industry is experiencing a disruptive phase.  Technologies such as distributed generation, storage, EVs and microgrids have the potential to impact competition and regulatory models in a fundamental way over the longer term.

In every part of the world decreasing solar PV prives combined with cheaper storage are beginning to displace centralized generation. This is changing the economics of the traditional electric power business model based on the existing, centralized power networks.  Accenture argues that if consumers are given a cost-effective option to move off the grid (for example, grid parity of coupled solarPV and storage), utility revenues will be at risk.

Utilities under threat from PV and other microgeneration technologies will need to look at novel strategies to develop new sources of revenue and integrate new distributed  generation capacity while maintaining quality and security of supply. 

23% of respondents said that they expected their utility would have a significantly different business model by 2030.  For example, incentivizing consumers with microgeneration capacity to stay on the grid or developing and maintaining microgrid solutions on behalf of consumer groups.

Other areas of competition

The Accenture 2013 Executive survey indicates a substantial degree of competition from new entrants is expected even within the next 5 years.  Respondents saw increased competition in the following areas:

• 85% - beyond the meter energy efficiency and demand response
• 85% - distributed generation
• 85% - data-related services (using customer electric power usage data). 
• 67% - demand-side aggregation
• 58% - PEVs and charging infrastructure
• 57% - smart meter services
• 52% - microgrid development and operations
• 48% - Embedded (distribution) energy storage
• 46% - Power electronics h/w and services
• 43% - Last-mile deployment

While increased competition in areas such as distributed generation and demand aggregation is widely expected, respondents expect competition to increase even in the core distribution business including embedded energy storage, power electronics hardware and services and last-mile network deployment.

The changes that are required are fundamental and a majority of the respondents said that legislative and regulatory change will be required.

Data management

The telecommunications, insurance, and other industries view IT as a strategic asset, whereas utilities still treat it as a cost centre.  Utilities are under invested in data management technology which does not position them well for the rapidly increasing volume of data and the competitive environment that they are beginning to experience.  96% of the utility executives that Accenture surveyed said that data management will be critical or important for managing the complexity of the network. Some industries are taking data management very seriously.  A survey of 600 companies revealed that 66% of them have appointed Chief Data Officers.

Convergence and Analytics

The area where respondents saw the most value from analytics was grid operations (96%). Being able to use visualization and analytical tools to monitor and manage complex modern networks which include distributed generation, storage, PEVs, and potentially microgrids is the first priority in both Europe and North America.  This where the next generation of "converged" analytical tools that integrate GIS,  artificial intelligence, grid analytical models that take account of network topology, and visualization tools and can operate in a real-time data streaming environment are required.

Outage management (93% in NA) and asset management (92%) were the next priorities in NA.  In Europe the next priorities were asset management (92%) and volt/var analytics (83%).

In 2009 12% of the companies surveyed were using predictive analytics.  This had risen to 33% in 2012.  But the same year 60% of internal customers surveyed said that they wanted predictive analytics.

In the specific area of AMI, Accenture's analysis suggests that the value of using smart grid analytics to transform operating results conservatively could approach  $40-$70 per meter per year.  Financial benefits of this order provide a strong motivation for companies to use modern grid analytics to drive change in business processes.

NIST Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability Standards 3.0 to be released for public comment

At the inaugural meeting of the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP), Dave Wolman of NIST announced that the next NIST Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability Standards 3.0 will be released in December for public comment.  I've blogged about the 1.0 and 2.0 releases previously.

Some the important changes are

• Architecture - reflects input from the E.U. which is heavily focused on integrating dustributed generation
• Generation -  incorporating distributed energy resources (DER) in addition to bulk generation, reflecting E.U. priorities
• Cybersecurity - to be consistent with President Obama's Executive Order
• Resiliency - getting more attention in this release

Future developments include transactive energy and microgrids which are getting a lot more attention as a result of the deployment of coupled solar + storage solutions.