Frequently Asked Questions

What is EPRI and what does it do?

EPRI is the home base for collaborative science and technology research for the electricity industry. EPRI is the original non-profit collaborative R&D organization and the main source of expertise on key industry issues, addressing nearly every aspect of electricity generation, delivery, and use. It offers membership and participation in more than 100 collaborative technology research programs, as well as technology transfer activities that help electricity industry customers apply EPRI research results, including thousands of off-the-shelf hardware, software, and information products for enhancing power system.

What was the Electricity Innovation Institute (E2I) and what did it do?

E2I's work has now been incorporated into the IntelliGrid group directly within EPRI. The following statements reflect the status of E2I during the development of the IntelliGrid Architecture.

The Electricity Innovation Institute, or E2I, was a non-for-profit affiliate organization created to manage collaborative R&D between the public and private sectors on longer term, strategic energy technology issues. E2I brought the technical excellence of EPRI to bear on problems that require both public and private funding through special outreach to state and federal energy agencies. E2I did not have a separate technical staff. Rather, it contracted project management from EPRI and its staff. Initial R&D efforts, which were organized under the Consortium for Electric Infrastructure to Support a Digital Society (CEIDS), included the Distributed Energy Resources (DER) Public/Private Partnership, CO2 Capture and sequestration, and the Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) programs.

What is the mission for CEIDS?

CEIDS holistically addresses power system technology needs from the grid to the end-user and provides leadership in developing the architecture and specifications of the future electricity power system. CEIDS, through a unique collaboration of public, private, and governmental stakeholders, provides the science and technology that will power a digital economy and integrate energy users and markets

Who are the CEIDS partners and who provides guidance to it?

Currently, the CEIDS partnership includes utility companies, private sector high tech companies, and the Federal government. Program guidance is provided by

• Steering committee composed of the funding partners
• Project advisory committees composed of technical staff from the partners

What is the mission for the IntelliGrid Project?

The Integrated Electric Communications System Architecture (IntelliGrid Architecture) project developed an open industry-wide architecture for the power and communications system of the future based on and contributing to the development of key open standards and making results available on as large a scale as possible. IntelliGrid Project team worked with a variety of stakeholders to develop an overall vision for the future communications for power systems. The IntelliGrid Project is foundational to CEIDS and will guide future CEIDS activities.

What would be the benefits of implementing such an architecture?

CEIDS, E2I and EPRI see a number of challenges facing the power industry that its communications infrastructure is not currently prepared to address. A power system making use of an integrated electrical and communications systems architecture would be:

• Self-healing and adaptive, applying automated applications for protection, fault detection, fault location, sectionalization and automatic service restoration over wide areas of the service territory.
• Interactive with consumers and markets, permitting real-time pricing, energy trading and load management.
• Optimized to make best use of aging equipment, personnel from multiple organizations, and other resources in a competitive environment.
• Predictive, scheduling maintenance ahead of time to prevent, rather than just react, to emergencies.
• Distributed, permitting activities such as generation, metering, load shedding, etc. to be easily performed at different locations and by different organizations.
• Integrated, merging the previously separate functions of monitoring, control, protection, maintenance, energy management, distribution management, business, and corporate information technology.
• Secure, protecting our vital infrastructure from  cyber or physical attack.

Although these functions are performed today by various utilities, there is much variation in the level of implementation, and they are generally not performed on a wide enough scale to address the level of problems faced by the grid today, as clearly illustrated by the Northeast blackout.

What is the difference between IntelliGrid Architecture and the Utility Communications Architecture (UCA) project undertaken by EPRI?

IntelliGrid Architecture incorporates UCA, but is wider in scope. UCA, which has evolved to become the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61850 communications standard for substations, is only one of the technologies that have become part of the IntelliGrid Architecture. UCA has provided a suite of protocols and a data model for managing substation and feeder equipment. In addition to looking at such solutions, the IntelliGrid Architecture has addressed merging such technology with other utility activities such as energy management, distributed generation, consumer operations, energy trading, security, and new physical layer technologies like wireless. The IntelliGrid Architecture recognizes that the communications architecture of the future will not be homogeneous. Instead, it recommends applying standard technologies such as UCA/IEC 61850 where they are most appropriate, and recommend mechanisms for upgrading and migrating to these standards.

What are the deliverables for the IntelliGrid Project?

The IntelliGrid Project team has provided a number of deliverables to ensure the architecture will become a reality:

• A list of the various stakeholders in the utility industry today to facilitate collection of requirements and solicit input into the architecture development.
• Brief descriptions of communications technologies currently available for use in the industry.
• Descriptions of existing and planned utility activities and best practices, especially as they affect data communications requirements.
• Power system functions describing important utility activities, especially new practices and technologies envisioned by industry leaders.
• An analysis, using standard systems architecture methodology, of industry communications requirements.
• Recommendations of best-practice existing technologies, when and where they should be used, and migration plans for utilities to make use of them
• Recommendations based on the analysis of new technologies that must be developed or modified from existing capabilities.
• An action plan for the steps required to put IntelliGrid Architecture in place, especially new open standards that must be developed or modified.

How Can I Get Involved?

The IntelliGrid Project team is actively soliciting input and involvement from power producers, customers, and other audiences.  To learn more, contact the project team.