Microsoft and our partners are preparing for the increasing sophistication and automation of the grid, including the entry of a new type of energy consumer who is also an energy producer and provider of stored energy.
Indeed, industry visionaries believe tomorrow's grid will need to enable bidirectional power flows and bidirectional information flows about consumption and pricing between utilities and consumers. Once they are enabled that way, tomorrow's transmission and distribution systems could very well become self-healing, as millions of new electricity flow monitoring grid devices combine with end users' smart meters to send terabytes of data to control systems, offering opportunities for management and optimization. Entirely new business models may develop in response to consumers' ability to produce and add electricity to the grid through distributed generation sources or the electric storage of their plug-in vehicles. These will be the new characteristics of a Smart Energy Ecosystem, one that is more advanced and complicated than the currently popular notion of a ‘smart grid.’
To describe this vision and its technology considerations, Microsoft has created and published its Smart Energy Reference Architecture (SERA), a framework intended to help utilities address the implementation challenges for both the smart grid and the Smart Energy Ecosystem. SERA builds upon the Microsoft observation that utilities must seek to integrate virtually every operation of their enterprise. By doing so they will better coordinate their business operations with the new demands on generation and delivery from customers, shareholders and regulators.
Microsoft and partners like Alstom Grid, ESRI, Itron, OSIsoft, Telvent and others are preparing utilities for a new era of integrated grid, transmission, and generation. Technology systems offer solutions to numerous energy delivery challenges, including:
Asset management | Distribution management | Energy management |
Mobile workforce management | Network planning, design, and engineering analysis | Project intelligence/management |
Regulatory compliance | Smart metering | |
The following scenarios describe the delivery challenges facing power and utility companies and the technology system solutions offered by Microsoft and our partners:
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BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYTICS
Business Challenge
The advanced distribution network envisioned by smart grid advocates requires the integration of communication networks and sensors with the analytical capabilities of information technology. The vision includes the ability for grid self-diagnosis and the best immediate response in real time. For instance, the crews that are already closest to a trouble spot will be dispatched by an automated system when the monitoring and control systems detect a likely problem. And if the problem requires expert help, the system will identify the best subject matter expert for the job, and automatically alert them to engage with the resources in the field. Such advanced analytical capabilities will rely upon an accurate and complete network data model to ensure reliability.
Benefits
Microsoft and partners such as
Avanade and
Enspiria makes business intelligence (BI) technology tools available to civil and electrical engineers, technicians, plant managers, planners, customer service representatives, safety officers, human resources personnel, and others throughout a utility. Through enhancements in data transformation, aggregation, analysis, reporting, and integration with Microsoft Office, decision makers at all levels of a utility can have the data they need, in the time and format they want it.
Microsoft BI solutions integrate with utilities' existing technology and operational environment for transmission and distribution, taking advantage of existing IT assets and reducing the need for big new expenditures on the systems utilities rely on for achieving a smarter grid. Finally, Microsoft Unified Communications technologies enable the alerting and notifications across communications channels, in real-time, automatically.
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DISTRIBUTION MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (DMS)
Business Challenge
Distribution management systems support the operations of the electric system through applications that process topology; balance online three-phase distribution power flows; analyze contingencies; and perform analyses for study mode, switch order management, short circuits, volt/volt-ampere reactive power (VAR) management and loss, and, arguably the most important distribution operations function, outage management. DMS applications require an electric system model that includes connectivity, impedance, equipment, load distribution, and most likely geographic coordinates for all components. Obtaining such data and enabling regular updates require access to data that originates in sources such as GIS/AM-FM (geographic information system/automated mapping-facilities management), customer information systems (CIS)/billing, and system study load-flow packages.
Benefits
Microsoft partner Telvent offers state-of-the-art distribution management capabilities that allow utilities to plug in new automation capabilities and associated information sources and leverage them to further optimize the distribution grid.
Microsoft is working with
Alstom Grid to further assist the EMS and market management solutions that play key roles in a utility's overall ability to deliver a smarter grid.
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ENERGY MANAGEMENT AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
Business Challenge
As the smart grid evolves, it will require real-time monitoring and management of information is becoming a requirement throughout the smart energy ecosystem. New requirements include the automation of substations, optimization of markets, and archiving historical data to be used in planning and analysis.
Benefits
With partners like
Alstom Grid and
OSIsoft utilizing products and technologies such as
Microsoft SQL Server 2008,
BI tools and
StreamInsight for complex event processing, utilities utility workers can enhance their management of transmission and distribution grid capabilities and improve operational efficiency across the utility value chain. Utilities will be able to transform the current structure of the electric grid into a more intelligent system that is reliable, stable, and energy-efficient.
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GIS/ASSET MANAGEMENT
Business Challenges
Characterized as it is by distributed yet connected equipment, a smart grid will require that utilities are acutely aware of where their equipment and resources are located, even across thousands of square miles. Customer care representatives, dispatch personnel, managers, executives, and field crews will need easy ways to visualize and manage the grid and various transmission and distribution assets. At the same time, they'll require accurate and precise information about assets on the grid, including location and connectivity, even to the end user.
Benefits
The smarter grid will be managed by utility personnel using geographic information systems (GIS) that operate on their own communication network. With its partners
ESRI and
Telvent, Microsoft has demonstrated that
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 can break down the organizational silos that contain spatial data. The solutions equip utility personnel throughout the enterprise with spatially enabled applications that leverage
Bing Maps, an essential requirement for enabling quick and very quick decision making. In the smart grid era, such access to information will turn spatial data into actionable information.
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MOBILE WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT
Business Challenges
Forecasting, planning, and scheduling can positively-or negatively-affect overtime costs, travel time between jobs, and overall service levels. Good delivery practices mean having the correct resources, with the appropriate skills and parts, in place and being ready and able to mobilize at the right time. While many utilities have sought various money-saving solutions for their fleets over the years, better scheduling through software solutions can realize true savings and make a lot of sense.
Benefits
Microsoft partner
ClickSoftware is making a difference in the areas of mobility and mobile workforce management by offering advanced scheduling, forecasting, and planning solutions for utilities. By migrating its solutions to the Microsoft platform using
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and
SQL Server Reporting Services, ClickSoftware is improving utilities' overall scheduling functions. And as a going-green byproduct, it is helping utilities with their fleet fuel conservation efforts, as better scheduling reduces fuel consumption and decreases emissions. Better scheduling also improves business processes, which is important when utilities will grapple with the consequences of an older generation leaving the workforce.
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PROJECT INTELLIGENCE
Business Challenges
Managing large capital projects properly can save millions of dollars. Traditionally, utilities have used rigorous manual processes, only to find that they could be applied to only a limited set of projects. Manual processes lack the ability to simulate large complex projects and then identify problems before work begins. They also cannot provide deep and persistent visibility into the key performance indicators that ensure successful completion of large capital projects across an enterprise.
Benefits
Project intelligence (PI) solutions from Microsoft and partners such as
Bentley and
Pcubed enable utilities to deploy best practices for management and innovation across all their projects. Microsoft's integrated business intelligence solution combines with the capabilities of
Microsoft Project Server to bring PI to utilities, along with associated management and project innovation capabilities. The capabilities go beyond traditional project management to enhance a wide variety of existing technologies such as collaboration in design, advanced 3-D simulation/modeling, management of government funding programs to infrastructure lifecycle management.
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SMART METERING
Business Challenges
Once smart meters are installed, utilities will face the daunting challenge of receiving data from millions of devices dispersed across their operating areas. Data will flood their IT infrastructures and pose unprecedented challenges for management and comprehension. Utilities will need IT solutions that help with meter data management (MDM) and the advanced metering infrastructure.
Benefits
Microsoft and partners Itron and OSIsoft have created management and flexibility capabilities that help utilities determine the right intervals that make sense for their smart meter programs and adjust as new technologies become available.
The Itron Enterprise Edition Meter Data Management is an enterprise-wide data management solution for interval, register and event data for residential and C&I customers. It is a scalable, open-architecture system that manages data from many different collection systems. It also provides secure, accurate, reliable data to a wide array of utility billing and analysis systems.
The OSIsoft
Meter Data Unification and Synchronization (MDUS) system integrates AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) head-end systems with SAP AMI Integration for Utilities software. The OSIsoft MDUS allows the business to pull all real-time information for the smart grid together facilitating business functions, demand response load and operational analysis.