An Overview of Smart Grid Standards

1. An Overview of Smart Grid Standards Erich W. Gunther erich@enernex.com February 2009

2. Why Use Standards? • Avoid re-inventing the wheel • Learn from industry best practices • Specify requirements more easily • Reduce integration costs • Prevent single vendor “lock-in” • Vendors share a much larger market

3. Making Standards Work Items critical to a successful standard: • Mature spec • Involved user group • Certification process • Revision process • Marketing, labeling • Implementations • Tool sets

4. Why International Standards? • Several Advantages • Time-tested process • Proven fair and open • Can be accelerated if needed • Other alternatives: • “de Facto” needs a market-maker • Industry consortia can work well • E.g. ZigBee, HomePlug, Cable Labs • User groups can create requirements specifications • E.g. OpenHAN, AMI-SEC, AMI-Enterprise • Work even better if endorsed by a standards org

5. Standards in the Smart Grid • EPRI IntelliGrid Architecture, http://www.intelligrid.info • Catalog of Use Cases, Standards, Technologies Real-time Simulation Wide-Area Reliability Network Optimization Customer Participation Participation in Energy Markets

6. Smart Grid Comm Standards Domains

7. Enterprise and Control Center • There is a culture of manual integration • Very labour-intensive and costly • Object models and services defined, but… • A variety of underlying technologies: UML, XML, OWL, XSD, RDF, OPC • Working on agreement on a design framework

8. T&D Wide-Area Networks • Many of these are considered obsolete or aging in the general IT world • Still in common use in the power system

9. T&D Substations • Automation common in transmission • Business case tough in distribution • Well-known problems and solutions • Moving to the next level

10. Access Wide-Area Networks • Used to reach the Collector or Substation • Too expensive, too unreliable or too slow for actual access to home

11. A B Network A Network B A B Field Area Networks – Distribution and AMI • Offerings mostly proprietary • Wireless mesh, licensed or unlicensed • Power line carrier, narrowband or broadband • New standard activity just started in 2008 • Open standards not useful yet • Cellular, WiMAX, ADSL, Cable, FITL • Not economical or not reliable or both • Mostly only reach the Collector level • Interop solution: common upper layer • Network layer preferred: IP suite • Most don’t have bandwidth • Application layer instead: ANSI C12.22 • Too flexible, not enough interoperability • Need guidelines, profile from users • More bandwidth the main solution!

12. Home Area Networks • ZigBee and HomePlug alliance • Popular open specifications • LONWorks, Insteon, Z-Wave, X10 – popular proprietary networks • Challenges coming in Electric Vehicles

13. Distributed Resources and Commercial • Rapidly growing, but tend to be “islands of automation” • Concerns over integration with power utilities • Need to get people talking

14. Another Look at Smart Grid Standards

15. Standards Challenges for Smart Grids • Need Common Object Models • Wishy-washy standards • More bandwidth in the field • Proprietary field networks • Too many stds. in the home • Merging power and industry • Merging meters and distribution automation • Holistic security

16. Summary We have the technology. We have the lessons learned. We just have to apply it!

17. Address design in breadth and depth

18. Address design in breadth and depth • A software application is evident to users only at one level • Must operate transparently to the appropriate depth to interact with other systems • May be tied to key hardware elements of the system • If tied, must be upgradable and extensible • If hardware is exchanged, must continue transparent operation (with some configuration) • At the physical level, not allways possible to have an appropriate connection that facilitates openness and competition (e.g., meter under-glass interface for communications boards; multi-vendor interface inside of relays)

19. Recommended focus areas • Standard field LANs (FANs) • Innovation drived by vendor tension • More field bandwidth • Eliminate single-purpose networks and facilitate innovation • CIM design framework • Tighten allowable choices and develop implementation guide • CIM application security • Guidelines needed for verifiable security • CIM / IEC 61850 harmonization • Motivate users group to eliminate identified gaps • IEC 61850 outside of the substation • Incentivize vendors to extend reach of products and systems

20. Recommended focus areas, pt. 2 • ANSI C12 guidelines • Demand demonstrations of interoperable products • Finish AMI-SEC work products • Component catalog and implementation guide • Asset Management • Incentivize utilities to leverage infrastructure to better manage business • Distributed Energy Resources • Re-think and re-design hardware and software to account for two-way energy flow • Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles • Need policies, regulations, business model, standards, etc.

21. Key Strategies • Drive stakeholders from standards development to interoperability demonstrations • Holistic targets eliminate single-purpose design and incompatibilities • Technical, communications, environment, regulation, etc. • Apply systems engineering and third-party metrics to avoid single-entity rate-or-return projects

22. Key recommendations • DOE GridWise Architecture Interoperability Checklist should be used by policy makers to evaluate utility proposals • Smart Grid News technology/product/project checklist or equivalent should be used to validate “smartgridness” • Standards-based solutions should be favored over proprietary solutions via legislation, rules and regulations • Desired outcomes and important characteristics (e.g., interoperability) should be specified by policy makers rather than specific standards (where possible) • Research needed to accelerate development and fill the gaps in security, smart grid networks, device management, information privacy and field network interoperability