Grid Management by Region

The American power grid is a fragmented array of privatized and deregulated companies all striving to make a buck by producing, distributing or selling electricity. Helping this mass of companies collectively and reliably deliver power to consumers is a group of Independent System Operators (ISO’s), each of which is responsible for facilitating the production and flow of power in its geographic area. Some of these ISO’s work in only one state (e.g. New York’s NY-ISO, www.nyiso.com), while others work across multiple states (e.g. the New England ISO, www.ne-iso.com).

The ISO’s generally operate as not-for-profit corporations, providing price and demand information to power companies. While the local power grids are monitored with an impressive array of equipment and technology to bring this data to the ISO, very strict rules are followed in sharing aggregated results back out to power companies so as not to give any one company an unfair advantage over another. How and when specific commercial data is shared is at the discretion of the ISO, often to the frustration of their member companies.

Worse is the state of emergency communications of operational data between the member companies. These communications use a system of telephone hotlines put in place by federal regulation many years ago. In a deregulated world of rapid supply and demand fluctuations, and with integrated power networks automatically adjusting to such demands within minutes, this hotline system is no longer adequate to ensure grid stability and reliable power flow. Communication between neighboring network operators needs to be almost instantaneous and cannot rely on humans identifying problems, each performing their own analysis and hoping that the recommended course of action communicated on the hotline is followed. Clearly, the hotline system is inadequate to prevent the deterioration of isolated failures into grid collapse, as demonstrated recently in the American northeast.

The Need for Utility Computing

Although the ISO’s provide guidance to their member companies for the production of power in their region, this is typically a once-per-day event. An example of this guidance is available on the New England ISO site at http://www.iso-ne.com/smd/operations_forecasting/morning_report_external.html. It includes information such as reserve requirements, capacity surplus or deficiency and transfers available from neighboring regions. All of this is useful information to the power companies for daily operations planning, but offers very little guidance for handling the dynamics of real-time problems.

In order to be able to help ensure optimal and reliable power production and distribution, companies need appropriate guidance as it occurs, in real-time, about problems in the power grid beyond their own operating facilities. Unfortunately, most companies are reluctant to share their real-time data with their grid partners, who are often also their competitors.

The same is true for the ISO’s, but for different reasons. Operated as a set of independent entities with power reliability goals for their region only, they are not stepping forward to pro-actively build multi-region or national real-time data sharing systems. And, even if a national system were built, this would not be enough, since a significant amount of Canadian power production is also woven into the American power supply grid in real-time.

To those of us in the utility computing space, the solution is obvious. An independent third party needs to step forward and collect the data directly from each of the power producers, distributors & ISO’s for real-time aggregation and analysis. The data and analysis results would then be made available for broadcast and/or transfer back to any entity needing it to help ensure reliable power delivery. In this way, all of the companies involved in power production and delivery would have access to the same real-time information, independent of other boundaries. This would then provide a common basis for decision-making and enable real-time collaboration between companies across the existing telephone hotline network.

Utility Computing Offers a Real Solution

The idea of sharing power production, quality and availability data in real-time is not just a pipe dream, but something that can be implemented using technology and solutions already available today.

Already, power companies share a great deal of non-real-time information to regulatory authorities such as FERC (the US Federal Energy Reliability Council), the regional ISO’s and others. Since most power companies are extremely well instrumented, and already collect hundreds of thousands of data points from their operations and networks into real-time databases (such as the PI System from OSIsoft), making the step to sharing real-time data and updating that data several times per minute is quite straight-forward.

Utility computing companies focused on the sharing of real-time operational data already have the tools and infrastructure required. Secure connections to the real-time systems at the individual power companies can be made without impacting existing systems and without compromising network security. In fact, this utility computing model is already well-proven in the chemical and oil industry where it is used to share key operating data with key suppliers and partners to improve operational performance through real-time collaboration.

Now bringing this utility computing capability to the power industry is therefore quite feasible.

Information is Power… and Reliability!

Information is power, and in this case, that information can bring more reliable power.

Once individual companies can “see” relevant grid data from operations in their regions in real-time, they can take actions to avoid imbalances and improve overall power availability and reliability. With the information where it’s needed, the US power grid starts to look a lot like a modern-day utility computing model with each node sensing and reacting to the conditions around it in real time, working in an independent but coordinated fashion to bring a reliable service to its customers.

There may still be a need to invest the billions of dollars required to rebuild the US power networks with more advanced switchgear and new trunk lines, but it is also time to spend the few million dollars it would take to replace the current telephone hotline system and fragmented information availability with a model that uses most of the existing IT infrastructure already in place and works in real-time.

And that model has utility computing written all over it.

Roland Heersink is co-founder and CEO of Industrial Evolution, a company that applies the utility computing model in the real-time world of production and manufacturing operations. Mr. Heersink can be contacted on roland.heersink@industrialevolution.com.