EnergyIoT Article 2 – Architectural Challenges to the Energy Transformation

By Stuart McCafferty, David Forfia, and Eamonn McCormick

Disclaimer:  The viewpoints in this article and others in the series are the personal views of the authors and in no way are meant to imply or represent those of the companies they work for.

In today’s electric power ecosystem, adding new capabilities is tedious, time-consuming, and expensive.  A great example of this is the move towards Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADMS).  It takes years and 10’s of millions of dollars of investment.  And, when it is finally integrated, it is a constant challenge and expense to add new IT and grid assets – just to maintain marginal situational awareness of the system.

Consider this example. . .  When a homeowner purchases a photovoltaic (PV) system, he must first get the system installed by a certified electrician following the local building code process, then register it with the local power company and get in line for an interconnect agreement, which can take anywhere from several days to several weeks or even more.

If the same homeowner purchases a new television set, he does not need to do anything more than plug it in and connect it to his cable or satellite box.  The cable/satellite company doesn’t care.  And, the system is up and running in minutes with no hassle and no delay.

Why is the grid so different from every other connected service?  Is it that much more complex?  Is it because it is a monopolistic ecosystem?  Or, perhaps, is it because we have not evolved the architecture, policy, and processes to enable a much more dynamic, democratic, and consumer choice driven marketplace?

No one will argue that operating the grid is easy.  We have to maintain synchronization and appropriate voltage, amperage, real and reactive power levels across the entire system for power quality and reliability.  But, we have also been doing this for over 100 years and have learned a lot about how to operate the grid.  It is time to leverage all the knowledge we have experienced in moving electrons from generation to load, to apply new technologies to dramatically simplify adding and removing grid components, and create a new ecosystem that enables the ability to add PV, demand response, battery, and electric vehicle (EV) assets as easily as plugging in a new television.  Imagine instead an ecosystem that allows a consumer to purchase a PV system at Home Depot, either pay someone or install it themselves, and when the consumer plugs it in:

1. It ANNOUNCES itself
2. It DESCRIBES itself
3. It PROVISIONS itself
4. It COMMISIONS itself

And minutes after it is installed, the utility knows what it is, where it is, and what capabilities it has.  The power flow model is immediately updated to include the new “node”, and the consumer can immediately leverage its ability to convert solar radiation into electrons and perhaps even bid it into a local distribution market.

This is not science fiction.  In theory, we could do this today.  However, the existing architectural constructs and the legacy siloed utility systems make this extremely unlikely, perhaps impossible.  We have a proposed solution that leverages today’s DevOps capabilities that companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Red Hat, and Alibaba have been using for many years to allow their systems and their customers’ systems to elastically scale to enormous dimensions simply, elegantly, and practically.  More to come on that later in Article 3 - 6.

The roots of our architectural challenges derive from how the grid has evolved over the past 100+ years. The grid represents a multi-generational investment in a “top down” architecture that delivers energy from central generation stations at the “top”, to loads “down” from the transmission grid to the distribution grid all the way to the energy consumer. The result is an electrically synchronized “machine” with power flowing downhill from high voltage to low voltage across a vast network of wires, transformers, and switches. The result is a hub and spoke architecture where transmission grids radiate various “branch” distribution networks that direct the energy “downhill”, eventually serving the loads.

The problem is that this is not how the transformed grid will work. In fact, many would argue it is just the opposite.  The transformed grid will have large numbers of distributed assets that include distributed generation, demand response, energy storage, electric vehicles, and devices not yet developed.  These new distributed assets are growing at a rapid pace and will continue that trend as Distributed Energy Resource (DER) prices drop, electricity prices increase, policy changes turn adoption into law, and a societal “call to action” to address climate change become more compelling.  It is time to think differently.

Here’s a Crazy Idea - Think of Everything as a Microgrid

If we can agree that the future grid is a bottoms-up model, then take the next step to consider each building block that makes up the grid as a microgrid - distribution networks, feeders, neighborhoods, buildings, cars, etc. These microgrid building blocks make up the overall grid, can manage themselves, may have markets associated with them, and can run independent of a grid connection as an electrical “island” for some period of time.  The grid as a whole becomes a “collective of microgrids” that can operate independently and in cooperation with other “microgrids”.  This type of thinking is already occurring at progressive utilities like San Diego Gas and Electric where there are plans to pilot 10MW batteries at some feeder locations to support microgrid capabilities, including islanding.  Electric vehicles are a great example of a “mobile microgrid” that is an architectural component and actor in a larger microgrid when it is plugged in and when it is not, it is an islanded microgrid with the capability of operating independently for some period of time.  This “distributed intelligence” begins at the grid edge and propagates outwards and upwards to support larger and larger grid structures.

What’s Wrong with the Architecture We Have Now?

Even without taking the mental leap to “everything is a microgrid”, the change from a one-way power flow model to bi-directional flow is today’s reality.  Today’s grid is different from the way it was designed.  And, Policy mandates requiring rooftop solar on all new construction in California and renewable/clean energy targets in numerous states and even the US military are accelerating the change.  Despite this, most utilities do not have a clear picture of what assets exist Behind The Meter (BTM) and are experiencing extremely challenging operational issues such as the “Duck Curve”.  Two-way power can result in overgeneration and exceeding thermal limits or unachievable load generator ramp rates when demand increases and solar voltaic assets stop producing electricity at sunset.  These types of issues put the grid in safety and reliability danger, and can result in circuits tripping off to protect grid equipment and leave customers in the dark.

Current State Issues

Consider how the current grid (and its architecture) meets the needs of the next generation of distributed energy:

Table 1:  Current Grid Obstacles

DOE’s Concerns on “Siloed” Systems

Dr. Jeff Taft of PNNL and Paul De Martini of Newport Consulting discussed the “system-centric” architecture issue head on in their groundbreaking “Sensing and Measurement Architecture for Grid Modernization.”. According to Taft & De Martini, the core problem is that grid systems, sensors, and data are hierarchical and rigidly bound to a specific utility system and often form disjoint data sets that cannot be leveraged by other applications. The electric power architecture is hierarchical with a “system-centric” design rather than “data-centric”, forcing a siloed approach and leading to difficult and expensive systems integration challenges and orphaned data. The authors illustrate this example below, which not only shows the application silo “stacks”, but also implies the complexity around data reuse and integration.

Figure 1:  Traditional Grid Sensor System Structure (Source Taft & De Martini - Sensing and Measurement Architecture for Grid Modernization)

Taft and De Martini highlight that the essential structures are vertical, leading naturally to silos. It is these silos which are the source of the fundamental limitations that a new architecture must address. Some Volt Var Control applications, Circuit Fault Indicator applications, Transformer Oil Analysis and other such applications all configured as silos.  Each has its own dedicated application system, communications systems, and data sets. The results manifest themselves in high costs, complex maintenance requirements, and little or no flexibility. 

 Taft and De Martini further identify that communications networks for grid sensors are generally hub-and-spoke, or, in the case of AMI, local mesh to a hub-and spoke backhaul (via cellular or substation), which is still effectively hub-and-spoke.  Such communication systems are often not scalable, have low bandwidth, and are siloed along with the data collection head ends and application systems.  In addition, the grid communications systems (SCADA, AMI) are normally configured as “polling systems” where the central system makes status requests from the different grid assets.  This round-trip communication paradigm unnecessarily burdens utilities with expensive high-bandwidth communications systems to support the heavy traffic.  A better solution would be an “event-driven” grid whose assets automatically report their status based on rules only when something changes or based on a timed interval (which is still an event).  Event-driven systems could cut the communications traffic in half, or even more, and could also save data storage and analytics costs and improve interoperability by removing siloed head end solutions and making data easily available to authorized systems.

 The industry is essentially stuck. The old paradigm of a top-down hierarchical, system-centric grid and vendor driven solutions is just not capable of moving the industry forward. Despite what some key industry vendors would have us believe, most solutions are not scalable, expensive, and create high latency vertical silos. The cost of expanding and integrating these silos is extremely high. The resulting solutions generally underperform, are brittle, and expensive to maintain, while delivering sub optimal business outcomes.  The industry must find a new way forward to break out of this pattern.  We must “un-silo” systems for better interoperability, move to event-driven communication paradigms, and operate from a data-centric perspective to allow authorized systems to leverage information for greater efficiencies and economics. 

 This was the second in a series of EnergyIoT articles addressing the challenges we are experiencing and proposing a fundamentally different architecture to solve the problems of today and tomorrow.  Our third article begins describing an alternative architecture.  The article, “EnergyIoT Article 3 – EnergyIoT Domain Building Blocks”, will be published on Monday, April 29 on Energy Central and LinkedIn.  It will be followed by deep dives in Articles 4-6 into the individual domains of the ecosystem.

The rest of the article series can be found here:  

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David Forfia, Gridwise Architecture Council Chair

David is the Chair of the GridWise Architecture Council since 2015 and has been a council member since 2013.

The GridWise Architecture Council (GWAC) is a team of industry leaders who are shaping the guiding principles of a highly intelligent and interactive electric system. The Council is neither a design team, nor a standards making body. Its role is to help identify areas for standardization that allow significant levels of interoperation between system components. More about the Council can be found at www.gridwiseac.org

David is the current chair of the Technical Advisory Committee and a former member of the Board of Directors of the Smart Electric Power Alliance.  He was also Chair of the SGIP Board of Directors from 2015 until 2017, and as a board member beginning in 2011.
 
In his current role, he is the Director of Technology Architecture and IT Transformation at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).  He began his career at Austin Energy Director of Information Technology Services for Austin Energy and was Deputy Director and Chief Information Officer for an $18B pension fund. He holds a BBA from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from St. Edward’s University.

Eamonn McCormick, Chief Technology Officer, Utilicast

Eamonn McCormick is the CTO at Utilicast, a leading energy industry consultancy. Eamonn is a passionate believer in the bright future of the energy industry and the importance of collaboration as the foundation for solving for our current industry challenges. He is a results driven technology leader with a track record of success. He has implemented strategic technology change at several large energy companies over the last twenty years in the areas of wholesale markets, transmission and energy distribution primarily. In addition Eamonn is currently chief architect of the Energy Block Chain consortium.

Stuart McCafferty, IoT Architect, Black & Veatch Management Consulting

Stuart McCafferty is an accomplished Smart Grid technical executive with an innovative history, strong relationships in the utility and vendor communities, business and partner development, platform and solution design, go to market planning and execution, and practical application of existing and emerging/disruptive technologies. Prior to B&V, he was VP of EnergyIoT for Hitachi America, where he led the architectural design of a distribution system platform supporting microgrid and Distributed Energy Resources (DER) related businesses.  At B&V, Stuart supports the utility, technology, and vendor communities in strategy and pragmatic application of DER that combines IoT best practices and technologies with energy standards and protocols.

Thought leader in the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, and connected home with practical application within the Smart Grid ecosystem. Expert in utility IT/OT and the application of DER and microgrids for resilience, economics, and reliability.

Stuart is a US military veteran, Air Force Academy graduate, an Energy Fellow for community resilience at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an Energy “Expert” for Energy Central, and Vice Chair of the Open Field Message Bus (OpenFMB) user group.