IntelliGrid Architecture is both a plan for the integrated information
infrastructure and a study of the requirements and principles required to make
particular automation projects work. In basic terms, the IntelliGrid Architecture is
a set of high level concepts that are used to design a technology independent
architecture as well as identify and recommend standard technologies, and best
practices. These high level concepts include:
§
The use of object models and modeling services to give standardized
names to data, and to describe their relationships, their formats, and their interactions
in standardized ways
§
The development of security policies and the implementation of security
technologies where needed, not only to prevent security attacks and inadvertent
mistakes, but also to handle recovery from the inevitable failures
§
The inclusion of network and system management to monitor and control
the information infrastructure in a manner similar to the monitoring and
control of the power system
§
The implementation of data management technologies and best practices to
handle the exponential growth of data and the need to ensure data consistency
across dispersed systems as more reliance is placed on automation
§
The use of the tactical approach of ‘technology independent components’
to manage the diversity of systems and the migration from legacy systems to
systems with standardized interfaces.
The energy industry encompasses many special types of
information requirements, some unique to its operational needs, such as
high-speed message exchange for protective relaying, and some very common to
many industries, such as e-commerce. Therefore, the IntelliGrid Architecture cannot
recommend a single set of standard technologies for use everywhere in the
industry, but rather it categorizes these special requirements as IntelliGrid Architecture
Environments, defining each Environment according to its common requirements,
and identifying the standards that are appropriate for each of these
environments.
The results of IntelliGrid Architecture project are contained in a series
of printable documents, computer models, and web-browser navigable hypertext
pages. It was early recognized that paper documents covering such a vast scope
as the IntelliGrid Architecture would be difficult to use. Therefore the key aspects
of the IntelliGrid Architecture, along with IntelliGrid Architecture Environments and their links to
the standard technologies, were incorporated into a modeling tool.
To make these results more understandable and useful to a
wider audience, information is extracted from the model and the printable
documents – and presented combined in a web-navigable (hypertext) website. This
website ties together key concepts contained within the model without
sacrificing the rigor and standardized notation used to document the model. The
results are presented in a human-friendly manner.
