The Integrated Energy and Communication Systems Architecture
Volume II:
Functional Requirements
EPRI Project Manager
Joe Hughes
Cosponsor
Electricity Innovation Institute Consortium for Electric Infrastructure to Support a Digital Society (CEIDS)
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ORGANIZATIONS THAT PREPARED THIS DOCUMENT
General Electric Company led by GE Global Research (Prime Contractor)
Significant
Contributions made by
EnerNex Corporation
Hypertek
Lucent Technologies (Partner)
Systems Integration Specialists Company, Inc.
Utility Consulting International (Partner)
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THE INTEGRATED ENERGY AND COMMUNICATION
SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE, EPRI,
The foundation of an architecture begins with a collection of requirements that span the scope of the energy industry enterprise. As the IECSA is envisioned to span from the energy trader’s desk to the thermostat in the home, the requirement space and subsequent stakeholder community was extensive. Volume II covers the requirements development processes and resultant requirements content that the team has gathered within the IECSA project.
The requirements gathering process was structured and based on the IEC standard “Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing – RM-ODP”. This standard identifies the fundamental information needed for architecture development, such as “who” is involved in an activity, “what” data is being exchanged, and “how” the data is being exchanged (i.e. – communication Quality of Service requirements). The requirements gathering process was facilitated by a “Domain Template” developed by the team, which then solicited information based on the RM-ODP guidelines. In particular, the template format (included in Appendix C) starts with a narrative that describes, in plain language, the particular function being detailed. The template then proceeds to guide the stakeholder through the identification and definition of the various entities (actors) involved in a process, the data exchanged between the actors, the sequence of steps involved in the data exchange, and the communication requirements (such as data speed, reliability, security, etc.) for the data exchange.
As many “pieces” of the IECSA architecture are in place and operating as “legacy” systems, the requirements gathering focused on “new” and “architecturally challenging” applications. However, several “baseline” applications were detailed and subsequent gaps and seams in the existing architectures, functionalities, and technologies were identified. An application was deemed architecturally challenging if it pushed the boundaries of current technology with regard to performance, reliability, security, configuration (number of devices with which to connect), data management, etc. To this end, requirements gathering focused on four areas that were identified as migration areas for the power system of the future, namely: Market Operations, Wide Area Measurement and Control (WAMAC), Advanced Distribution Automation (ADA) / Distributed Energy Resources (DER), and the Consumer Interface (including Real Time Pricing). It should be noted that these focus areas “cut across” multiple power system domains such as generation (primary and distributed), transmission, distribution, and consumer services.
During this phase of the project and throughout the project in general, the team made use and took significant advantage of existing materials. Team members did extensive use and review of existing documents. Specific documents reviewed included many from EPRI as well the FERC SMD, NERC operating guidelines, TC 57 documents, internal design documents from various utilities, paper reviews, and other documents. A complete listing of these documents is included in Appendix B.
In addition to the power system and energy applications, it was determined that the next generation energy architecture would require a management system for the communication system itself. These network management requirements were often identified in the use cases and been identified as “Common Services”, that is, services that span the entire architecture. These Common Services are detailed in Volume IV.
As mentioned earlier, in order to cover the extensive range of requirements, an equally extensive range of stakeholders had to be identified. To this end, a stakeholder identification and engagement process was prepared and undertaken, a process that is ongoing. Engagement took place on two fronts; namely, education and requirements capture, and included over 100 engagements with over 1000 individuals. Invariably, all engagements started with an educational presentation on IECSA. This educational presentation was prepared with each specific audience in mind, taking into account their specific background and experiences. With appropriately targeted audiences, detailed requirements gathering would be facilitated, typically resulting in the filling-in of a domain template resulting in a use case. In addition, the above-mentioned existing documents were used as references for the use cases. A description of the stakeholder engagement process can be found in Appendix A, and the list of stakeholders engaged and documents utilized to date can be found in Appendix B. A description of the domain template can be found in Appendix C.
The captured requirements should serve to further make the case for architecture development and larger scales of integration than is being either achieved or addressed within standards communities today. It must be kept in mind that these requirements are not exhaustive for every identified application that could use or be integrated with IECSA. In this way the associated common services and related architectural issues for the entire industry can be addressed by the IECSA’s carefully selected representative sample of application requirements and associated analyses. In effect, this completed set of IECSA requirements will cover most of the major architectural issues likely to be encountered by any foreseeable application. It should be noted, however, that IECSA is a living document that will be periodically updated with new use cases and new technologies as identified.