The urgent need for major changes to our power delivery system requires that key technologies be developed and implemented in our nation’s power grid. A wide range of technologies are needed and can generally be grouped into five key technology areas:

a) Integrated Communications
b) Sensing & Measurement
c) Advanced Components
d) Advanced Control Methods
e) Improved Interfaces and Decision Support

 

 

 

 

 

Integrated Communications

The implementation of integrated communications is a foundational need, required by the other key technologies and essential to the modern power grid. Due to its dependency on data acquisition, protection, and control, the modern grid cannot exist without an effective integrated communications infrastructure. Establishing these communications must be of highest priority since it is the first step in building the modern grid.

Integrated communications will create a dynamic, interactive “mega infrastructure” for real-time information and power exchange, allowing users to interact with various intelligent electronic devices in an integrated system sensitive to the various speed requirements (including near real-time) of the interconnected applications.

As a first order of business, there is a need to specify the technical requirements for the system (e.g., speed, redundancy, reliability). Various utility applications have different demands, and these must be fully defined up front.

Second, standards development must be seriously addressed and encouraged. Although communications media technologies are being developed very rapidly, their widespread deployment will be seriously delayed unless the development of universal standards is accelerated.

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Sensing & Measurement

Sensing and Measurement is an essential component of a fully modern power grid. Advanced sensing and measurement technologies will acquire and transform data into information and enhance multiple aspects of power system management.

These technologies will evaluate equipment health and the integrity of the grid. They will support frequent meter readings, eliminate billing estimations, and prevent energy theft. They will also help relieve congestion and reduce emissions by enabling consumer choice and demand response and by supporting new control strategies.

In the future, new digital communication technologies, combined with advanced digital meters and sensors, will support more complex measurements and more frequent meter reading. They also will facilitate direct interaction between the service provider and the consumer. Broadband over Power Line (BPL) and digital wireless communications are examples of technologies that can accomplish this interaction.

The core impacts of the sensing and measurement transformation further strengthen the case for their implementation. These technologies will fully empower the electric power market, allowing customer choice and input and resulting in savings in capital and operating costs, benefits to the environment through improved efficiency, and benefits to the economy and the public from enhanced safety, reliability, and power quality.

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Advanced Components

Advanced components play an active role in determining the electrical behavior of the grid. They can be applied in either standalone applications or connected together to create complex systems such as microgrids. These components are based on fundamental research and development (R&D) gains in power electronics, superconductivity, materials, chemistry, and microelectronics.

Unfortunately, the needed grid-related R&D in the United Kingdom has dropped to unacceptably low levels, particularly since the drive began to restructure the industry. Should this trend continue, the U.K. economy will suffer severely from the absence of a suite of advanced components that would elevate our existing national grid to world-class status.

Another barrier to the development and implementation of advanced components is the high cost involved in developing them. This, combined with the lack of clearly articulated argument for them, has had a chilling effect on the investment community.

Stakeholders must come to understand the worth of implementing key technologies such as advanced components. These technologies are critically important to the supply of electric power, allowing greater economy, safety, cleanliness, and reliability than is currently possible. To achieve a truly modern grid, we must have buy-in from all stakeholders.

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Advanced Control Methods

The advanced control methods (ACM) must be developed if we are to have a truly safe, reliable, and environmentally friendly modern grid.

ACM technologies are the devices and algorithms that will analyze, diagnose, and predict conditions in the modern grid and determine and take appropriate corrective actions to eliminate, mitigate, and prevent outages and power quality disturbances. These methods will provide control at the transmission, distribution, and consumer levels and will manage both real and reactive power across state boundaries.

To a large degree, ACM technologies rely on and contribute to each of the other four key technology areas. For instance, ACM will monitor essential components (Sensing and Measurements), provide timely and appropriate response (Integrated Communications; Advanced Components), and enable rapid diagnosis (Improved Interfaces and Decision Support) of any event. Additionally, ACM will also support market pricing and enhance asset management.

The analysis and diagnostic functions of future ACM will incorporate predetermined expert logic and templates that give “permission” to the grid’s software to take corrective action autonomously when these actions fall within allowable permission sets.

As a result, actions that must execute in seconds or less will not be delayed by the time required for human analysis, decision-making, and action. Significant improvement in grid reliability will result due to this self-healing feature of the modern grid.

ACM will require an integrated, high-speed communication infrastructure and corresponding communication standards to process the vast amount of data needed for these kinds of system analyses. ACM will be utilized to support distributed intelligent agents, analytical tools, and operational software applications.

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Improved Interfaces and Decision Support

Improved interfaces and decision support (IIDS) are essential technologies that must be implemented if grid operators and managers are to have the tools and training they will need to operate a modern grid.

IIDS technologies will convert complex power-system data into information that can be understood by human operators at a glance. Animation, color contouring, virtual reality, and other datadisplay techniques will prevent “data overload” and help operators identify, analyze, and act on emerging problems.

In many situations, the time available for operators to make decisions has now shortened from hours to minutes, sometimes even seconds. Thus, the modern grid will require the wide, seamless, real-time use of applications, tools, and training that equip grid operators and managers to make decisions very quickly.

Here are some areas where IIDS technologies will make a significant difference in the modern grid:

• Visualisation – IIDS will take vast amounts of data (gathered by other advanced key technologies) and reduce it into the format, timeframe, and technical categories most crucial to system operators. Visualization techniques will present this information in a quickly-grasped visual format to support operator actions and decisions.

• Decision Support – IIDS technologies will identify existing, emerging, and predicted problems and provide what-if analyses for decision support. For situations requiring system operator action, multiple options and the probabilities of success and risk for each will be presented.

• System Operator Training – Dynamic simulators utilizing IIDS tools and industry-wide certification programs will significantly improve the skill sets and performance of today’s system operators.

• Customer Decision Making – Demand Response (DR) systems will provide information to customers in easily understood formats that allow them to make decisions about how and when to purchase, store, or produce electric power.

• Operational Enhancements – As IIDS technologies are integrated with existing asset management processes, managers and users will be able to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of grid operation, maintenance, and planning.

The IIDS technologies in use today fall short of accomplishing these tasks. Improvements are needed at the human – machine interface to assist operators in comprehending the growing volume of data collected, its availability on a near real-time basis, and the complexity and speed of the advanced control methods that analyze and process this wealth of information.

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