Smart Grid Projects

The development of the Smart Grid has become critical to reliable, efficient, and renewable electric energy. Xanthus has participated in many of these efforts, including the ones described below:

NIST Smart Grid Projects

  1. NIST Phase 2: Support for Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP), Priority Action Plans (PAPs), and the Cyber Security Working Group (CSWG) as a subcontractor to EnerNex, assisting in the establishment of the SGIP and its governing board. The focus is on PAP 7 (Energy Storage and Distributed Energy Resources) and on the CSWG Standards Subgroup to assess the cyber security capabilities and gaps of existing standards and the new standards being developed by the PAPs.
  2. NIST Smart Grid Interim Roadmap, as a subcontractor to EPRI in developing a roadmap and action plan for NIST to identify the appropriate standards and to coordinate any needed standards development. This process has included two Smart Grid workshops to gather input from stakeholders and provide direction to NIST.

EPRI Distributed Energy Resources and Distribution Automation Projects

  1. Specification for PV & Storage Inverter Interactions using IEC 61850 Object Models, to develop the interactions between utilities and inverters for energy management, var support, and other functions, and then map these to existing and new IEC 61850-7-420 object models. These object models have been submitted to the IEC TC57 WG17, who is issuing a Technical Report (IEC 61850-90-7) containing these objects as a fast-track approach while the longer process for issuing an Edition 2 of IEC 61850-7-420 is undertaken.
  2. IEC DER Object Model Standards (IEC 61850-7-420), which includes communication object models for Distributed Energy Resources (DER). The DER device types covered are reciprocating (diesel) engines, fuel cells, photovoltaic systems, and combined heat and power (CHP). IEC 61850 is the international communications protocol standard for field communications. It has been expanded to include DER communications, hydro plant communications, inter-substation communications, and substation-to-control center communications. It will be expanded for distribution automation.
  3. Guidelines for Implementing Distribution Automation (DA) using IEC 61850, which provide guidelines for developing requirements for, and implementing, IEC 61850 for advanced DA. The IEC 61850 requirements for DA will be based on the existing IEC 61850 object models and design criteria, but will be extended as necessary to meet advanced distribution automation requirements, including interactions with DER, real-time pricing, market demand-response, and other functions of the future.

EPRI Smart Grid and IntelliGrid Projects

  1. Smart Grid Projects Assessment, to provide EPRI with a methodology and accompanying spreadsheet for evaluating the “Smart Gridedness” of Smart Grid projects. The report, “Smart Grid DER Projects Assessment” develops a methodology and quantitative metrics to evaluate Smart Grid projects related to integrating Distributed Energy Resources (DER) into the grid and market operations, including distributed generation, storage, demand response, and renewables. This project includes a Smart Grid Project Assessment spreadsheet that identifies the important characteristics of Smart Grid projects to achieve integration of distributed resources. i.e. those characteristics that indicate the extent to which these projects can fulfill the Smart Grid objectives.
  2. IntelliGrid Architecture to develop a power system industry communications architecture, based on a complete set of power system functional requirements for supporting self-healing power systems, energy marketplace transactions, sharing and synergy among all types of utility operational functions, and integrated customer services. The project results are being contributed as appropriate to relevant Standards Development Organizations and industry consortia to effectively move the development of key open standards forward to develop a robust industry infrastructure. In the area of customer services, extensive Use Cases were developed on Real-Time Pricing (RTP), Time-of-Use (TOU), market opportunities for customers using distributed energy resources (DER) for both energy and ancillary services, direct and indirect load control, and customer portals as “gateways” to implement these functions. Innovative communications technologies were discussed, ranging from Broadband Powerline Carrier (BPL) within the customer premises, to telephone, wireless solutions, the Internet, and certain proprietary radio systems. See http://IntelliGrid.info for a summary or IntelliGrid Architecture for the complete project on the web.
  3. Guidelines for Implementing Substation Automation using IEC 61850, which provide guidelines for implementing IEC61850 for substation automation. These guidelines were developed for EPRI clients.
  4. Communications Technology Assessment, which is a web-based product covering all aspects of utility business areas, telecommunications media, communications protocols, security, and R&D requirements for utilities.
  5. Network and System Management for utilities, which analyzes network management requirements for distribution automation, describes existing network management capabilities, and recommends network management approaches for distribution utilities.

California Energy Commission (CEC) Projects

  1. CEC: Value of Distribution Automation, to provide the California Energy Commission (CEC) with descriptions of distribution automation functions, possible scenarios for implementing these functions, the potential utility, customer, and societal benefits from these functions, and the technical challenges to implement them. The CEC has made it public as a draft document.
  2. CEC: Smart Grid: Distributed Generation using IEC 61850-7-420, to implement this international communication standards for distributed energy resources such as photovoltaic systems and other renewable systems in a project for the California Energy Commission (CEC).
  3. System Integration Assessment, to provide the California Energy Commission (CEC) with support and recommendations for system integration projects and R&D efforts that will benefit the electric power consumers.

Utility Standards Board (USB) Projects

  1. Utility Standards Board (USB), a group of many of the largest North American utilities, to develop de facto standards for the interface between AMI systems and the many functions on the utility’s “Enterprise Bus”, such as meter data management systems, billing systems, revenue protection systems, maintenance systems, outage management systems, and other utility systems.
    • The USB de facto standards for Meter Headend Event Codes have been used by the IEC TC57 WG14 as part of the Common Information Modeling (CIM) for AMI interfaces in IEC 61968-9.
    • The USB Remote Connect/Disconnect requirements have also been incorporated into the CIM standard.
    • The USB Outage Detection and Restoration requirements become part of the CIM standard.
    • MultiSpeak has also incorporated the requirements from the the Meter Headend Event Codes, the Remote Connect Disconnect and the Outage Detection and Restoration models.