The Internet: Implications for Power Delivery

Transmission & Distribution World September 1999

Utilities are exploiting the power of the Internet to communicate with customers, enhance operations and share information throughout the enterprise.

By Chuck Newton, Automation Editor

We have seen such rapid and pervasive growth in the use of the Internet at home and at work that no one in the electric power industry can say that they have been unaffected by the increasingly visible role the Internet plays. This phenomenon has two aspects. First is the external or public aspect of the Internet, whereby the utility can provide a broad array of information to its diverse audience of shareholders, suppliers and customers of all classes. Second, and perhaps more importantly, is the use of private, intranet support to increase the availability and rapid dissemination or broadcast capability to internal users about the current state of the business and its operations. When private information is exchangeable with selected external segments, such as industrial customers or neighboring utilities, then the term extranet has taken on meaning. In all three scenarios, Web browser technology is, or can be, used.

A review of recent advancements with this technology is quite revealing.

· In the past 48 months, the percentage of utilities with Internet Web sites has increased from 30% to 95%. The intent among information systems managers and operations managers is to move ahead with Web-based intranet access to offer operations and engineering information to a wider audience of authorized employees and key customers.
· Internet activities to date have been focused on providing mostly “static” or historic information to “external audiences,” with emphasis on marketing information, customer services and even billing information services. Thus, the information needs of customers, investors and other interested parties have been addressed.
· Intranet activities incorporating Web browser access are now underway. These activities focus on improving the utility’s internal operational capabilities, serving as another communications method for data acquisition, monitoring and control, as well as a conduit for information sharing among staff and management about the operational status of the utility. In fact, the Internet – in a secure intranet format – appears to be well on its way to serving as the foundation of the utility enterprise’s wide area network (WAN).

Activities for Customers

The scope of Internet-based activities already undertaken by electric utilities to retain, attract and keep customers satisfied and informed is already broad – from power-quality guidance to self-completed energy audits, online load profiling to on-line bill payment, remote request for service to vacation power turn-off requests. BC Hydro, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, is one utility using a unique approach to trouble call or outage management for noncritical situations. This innovative use of the Internet enables residential customers to key in information on outages involving streetlights.

Some utility authorities would like to issue online work permits to contractors. Online -permitting processes are in the final stages of development for application on the Internet. This requires migrating permitting procedures presently available to support walk-in or fax-in permit applications. SoftComp, an Internet firm based in Rockville, Maryland, U.S., and its innovative PermitsCentral.com Internet portal are harbingers of a host of customer-friendly products and services that will become available to (and through) utilities within the next year.

Activities for Operations and Engineering

Inside the utility, the Internet – or more appropriately the enterprise intranet – has served as the cornerstone for a variety of key applications that had been put on hold time and again during this decade, lingering largely because of communications issues and uncertainty over deregulation. Among these are substation automation – using an intranet adaptation of the Internet to access substation-based data files – and distribution automation – using an intranet approach to acquiring information about the status of various field devices. Field-operations management for maintenance, repair work and fault analysis now are able to benefit from the availability of Internet-like technology developments

The Benefits of Internet-Related Activities

  • Overcoming the lingering issue of mismatched communications, which for many years has en listed as a key obstacle impeding progress on all sorts of automation projects.
  • A relatively short and less costly development cycle for Web-based applications, especially those that can work with existing popular Web browsers.
  • The ease with which many more end-users can benefit from having access to utility operating information. Of course, with this benefit, comes the downside risk of lowered security.
  • Typically no requirement for additional hardware on the user or client side of the picture. Most computers and workstations now come equipped, or have been retrofitted with, popular Web browser software.

Remote diagnostics is another area where operations and engineering teams are making progress with the use of the Internet. PacifiCorp, Portland, Oregon, U.S., is using intranet-based programs to train meter engineers. Remote diagnostics for the utility’s installed base of customer meters also will likely become one of the applications of Internet technologies in the near future.

A subsidiary of Florida-based Apollo International, Trans-World PowerNet (TWPN), is actively working with Web browser technology to assist utilities in the development of cost-effective intranet-based data communications approaches to substation automation. The company has incorporated features such as events, logs and oscillography into its Web browser approach to substation automation.

TWPN’s data acquisition processor (DAP) is the on-site hardware linking the field intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) to the substation network. The DAP polls the IEDs for data and converts the data into TCP/IP format for transmission to the local controller device. The DAP uses report-by-exception techniques. The data is transmitted through a standard Ethernet local area network (LAN) bus, arriving at the controller PC via a standard Ethernet LAN card. The data is stored in a standard database format. The IEDs are controlled using a built-in human-machine interface, which also is responsible for real-time substation data displays. Information is available over the WAN via the company’s intranet using a substation Web server.

Definitions

  • Internet: The universal network that allows computers to talk to other computers in words, text, graphics and sound, anywhere in the world.
  • Intranet: A small version of the Internet that can only be used within a local area network. Companies often use intranets to communicate with employees. Although an intranet may provide links to Web sites on the Internet, it cannot be entered from the Internet.
  • Extranet: A multi-organizational intranet that allows limited, secure and controlled access between an organization’s intranet, and designated, authenticated (authorized) users from remote locations and organizations.

Salt River Project (SRP), Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., is a key customer of the TWPN offering, adopting the company’s system for use within its own substation automation program. Jim Hudson, project manager for the substation project, indicated that by using TWPN developed drivers, the TWPN DAPs installed at SRP substations can perform data collection from a variety of digital relays from multiple manufacturers. The Web browsers in use provide visual information in a menu-like manner, with the initial view being of the substation with “clickable” options to obtain information from individual relay IEDs. Real-time meter data, breaker status, megawatt and current values are readily obtainable. Fault data is recorded and stored on the hard drive, which is used as the system historian in the key substation.

From Electronic Storefront to SCADA File Sharing

GE Harris, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, has invested heavily into Internet-based technology for a portion of its new products and services offerings. Two key offerings are already available. The first is an electronic store for the company’s XA/21 users. Utility customers can purchase services and products online, enroll for training classes and input requests for quotations via the company’s “Web Store.” Early in August, the company received its first “on-line” order for an upgrade to EnterNet View.

EnterNet View is the second major effort launched recently at GE Harris. Already used by at least 10 of the company’s energy management system (EMS) customer sites, EnterNet View is based on GE Harris’ development of Java-based software that runs under any modern Web browser. EnterNet View provides displays of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) one-line diagrams with real-time alarms directly over the Web to authorized “users and customers outside the control center.” As such, security issues are paramount. The company has built in strong encryption capabilities and multilevel password techniques to ensure security.

The second generation of the product, EnterNet View 2, provides near-real-time viewing of EMS one-line displays; provides full graphics for dynamic data such as device states, tags and alarms; and can have a separate firewall to isolate the application from the EMS. Interestingly, only low-bandwidth telecommunications are required, so even cellular modems in the hands of field personnel can retrieve information in graphic form.

Georgia Systems Operation, Tucker, Georgia, U.S., a unit of Oglethorpe Power Corp., is one of the user sites where EnterNet View has been successfully implemented and integrated with the company’s XA 21 EMS. According to Greg Ford, Georgia Systems Operation’s control center manager, the EnterNet View application has been up and running since the beginning of 1999. The unique feature of this application is the ability of all 39 Georgia electric cooperatives to obtain near-real-time status information about the state of power generation and transmission activities affecting their service area. As such, it has become an extremely valuable planning tool, affording EMS-like views to SCADA level users.

The key benefits to its use within the state’s EMS community include the provision of EMS information available in a secure, read-only manner to multiple end users in different locations around the state. The product features full graphics displays and a simple user interface. In addition, Georgia Systems Operation’s team maintains control with high-level security required for access.

Ford says the member cooperatives are ready for more. “We will continue to come up with newer ways to use the service, and our group will come up with additional services for the membership cooperatives as time goes on. Initially, the intention was to provide historical data access to the cooperatives, a 24-hour look back capability.”

“Within weeks of its introduction,” says Ford, “we were requested to provide current activity status displays about the company’s generator and transmission operations to our customers, so that is what we developed shortly after launching the initial product. Customers are requesting more information, and they want it quicker. The familiarity of our customers with easy-to-use Web browser approaches, coupled with widely available Internet access, and the use of secure access measures, makes our job easier,” Ford says.

Web Browser-Based Applications

A discussion with Brent Brobak of Alstom ESCA, Bellevue, Washington, U.S., indicated that interfaces to substation servers needed to become available on a Web-based implementation to meet the requirement of ESCA’s customers. A unique aspect to this approach is the portability of displays built using the company’s EMP software for use on SMP, the company’s SCADA management platform. This flexibility has enabled clients such as Manitoba Hydro, Winnepeg, Manitoba, Canada, to accomplish such tasks as visual chart projection, integration of two HVDC units using site-installed programmable logic controllers and monitoring of telemetry SCADA remote terminal units. While these applications have not been ported to the Web-based SMP approach, plans call for an eventual migration to the new Web-based approach, according to Dave Kellas, systems engineering manager at Manitoba Hydro.

Substation Integration

In April 1999, the Anaheim Public Utilities Department, Anaheim, California, U.S., awarded a contract to Advanced Control Systems, Norcross, Georgia, to provide a Web server and associated tools to distribute real-time, same-time and historic data to non-utility department users in both graphical and tabular form with Web browser technology. According to Peter S. Wong, principal electrical engineer, Anaheim Public Utilities Department, “The city decided to procure and install a control system, which allows the utility to take advantage of the advances in substation automation built upon a modern open-computing environment that provides information to all city personnel.”

EPRI Activities

In addition to having a sophisticated Web site for the worldwide audience on the Internet and a restricted access portion for its member utilities, EPRI, formerly the Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, California, is involved in a major product development initiative involving the Internet and Web-based browser capabilities. In the June 1999 edition of EPRI’s Grid Operation and Planning News, an article by Peter Hirsch entitled “Building a Marketplace Infrastructure: The Public Internet Network and Communications Protocols” highlighted the pivotal role of the Internet as an enabling technology to support deregulation.

As the cornerstone of today’s North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC)-mandated OASIS (Open Access Same Time Information Systems), the Internet has brought the entire country’s grid operators and transmission providers and buyers together into this new marketplace that was mandated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Order 888. At the utility level, 1600 or more SCADA and EMS networks exist. The regional data networks and inter-regional links exist at the inter-utility level. And now, at the national level, supporting the deregulated transmission market, is the Internet-based OASIS, an information resource and tool for provision of information about energy and transmission rights. The bottom line is that the Internet has become the backbone for OASIS, which is relied on to facilitate power trading and open access.

Further efforts are underway at EPRI to define and develop a transaction management system to support transmission transaction information processing, NERC-compliant transaction tagging, transaction impact and curtailment analysis, available transfer capacity coordination, and user interface for information viewing and updating. Thus, the Internet, as well as various regional and national intranets and extranets, will become even more critical to the operation of the nation’s electrical grid.

Fault Location at TVA

For the past year, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Knoxville, Tennessee, U.S., has been using an intranet and Web browser approach to find, locate and isolate transmission line faults. Using a software application co-developed with ABB Electric Systems Technology Institute, Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S., TVA now has the capability at the desktop level to conduct double-ended fault-location studies using phasor information.

For this application, known as Fault Vision, authorized TVA employees in the operations and maintenance organization access the Web-based browser and application software through the TVA intranet. The software enables access to the individual IEDs installed along the transmission lines which, in turn, enables the software to compute fault locations.

TVA personnel with a need to accomplish this fault-location activity can be virtually anywhere: at headquarters, in a regional office, in the field, in service vehicles or at a substation. System access is limited to authorized internal users. The Web browser technology has made the system more accessible to all TVA employees.

T.W. (Timmy) Cease, TVA’s product developer of the application, states that the next step in this evolutionary product development effort is to correlate Fault Vision output with lightning location system data.

Future Developments

As these brief case summaries indicate, the future is beginning to take shape for transmission and distribution operations and engineering organizations around the world. - In many ways, this new world will be shaped by adaptations of Internet technology, Web browsers, TCP/IP communications, and the development of intranet and extranet applications. Web browser-based applications will incorporate more and more visual and geographic information.

Utilities and their information technology suppliers continue to develop even more exciting applications, some of which will involve image data transfer, such as Web-based electronic/engineering document management systems, using intranet and extranet approaches. Information from geographic information systems that is available over the Internet will soon be available to a broad base of new end users.

In the near future, we will see a continuing acceleration of power T&D applications based on a combination of Internet, intranet and extranet communications capabilities, built on Web browser technologies. If the inclusion of information and access security safeguards receive the paramount attention they deserve, then nothing will stop the continued dynamic growth of communications-centered operations and engineering applications.

Note: Chuck Newton first conducted research on the original Defense Data Network, precursor to today’s Internet, in 1998, following on the completion of a major report on the development of TCP/IP protocol in 1987.