IT and the smart grid, Peter Will,Information Sciences Institute, USC

Peter Will USC/ISI 1

IT and the Smart Grid

Peter WillUSC Information Sciences Institute

[email protected]://www.isi.edu/will/

Sources: Wikipedia, US DoE, EPRI, SCE, PG&E etc


The GridSwitchgear

TransformersPower lines

Command and Control

Electrical Energy

generators

consumers

Every country has one, Many countries are interconnectd


The US Ideal Grid


The Actual 3 US Grids plus Canada and Mexico connections


Grid Statistics

There are more than 3,100 electric utilities: 213 stockholder-owned utilities provide power to about 73% of the

customers 2,000 public utilities run by state and local government agencies

provide power to about 15% of the customers 930 electric cooperatives provide power to about 12% of the

customersAmerica has about 10,000 power plants. The "handoff" from electric transmission to electric distribution usually

occurs at the substation. There are hundreds of thousands of substationsThe distribution system is generally considered to begin at the substation

and end at the customer's meter. Also, in 2,000 localities across the country, state and local government

agencies operate their own distribution utilities, as do over 900 rural electric cooperative utilities.

Virtually all of the distribution systems operate as franchise monopolies as established by state law.


Power and Grid Control

Area Control OperatorsMajor power plants

“For an ac power grid to remain stable, the frequency and phase of all power generation units must remain synchronous within narrow limits. A generator that drops 2 Hz below 60 Hz will rapidly build up enough heat in its bearings to destroy itself. So circuit breakers trip a generator out of the system when the frequency varies too much. But much smaller frequency changes can indicate instability in the grid. In the Eastern Interconnect, a 30-milli-Hz drop in frequency reduces power delivered by 1 GW. If certain parts of the grid are carrying electricity at near capacity, a small shift of power flows can trip circuit breakers, which sends larger flows onto neighboring lines to start a chain-reaction failure.” from http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-9/iss-5/p8.html


Historic Catastrophic Failures

1965 NE blackout2003 Ohio FailureInternational

failures

Typical causes Trees falling on wires Ice build up

– aerodynamic clashes– Short to ground– Increase in load

Operators had only telephone connection to other operators• no sensors, • no real time control• No modern IT So controllable local faults escalated to bring down half of the USA


Grid Control

Today manualDispatching is human oriented in control rooms,

Phone connected, protection relays blow automatically. A few seconds can avoid a grid collapse

Tomorrow Lots of Architecture work still going on Network simulation, non-linear + narrow stability

regime Real time data, command and control

– SCADA– Use of Grid Computing in Electrical Grid Control

– Distributed Sensing --- Measure everything– Power flow– Multi-phase-angle measurement correlated with

GPS position– Line sag, temperature, moisture

– And AUTOMATE


Grid Failure Mechanisms

• Power factor and compensation needed• Switchgear, protection relays fail• Transformers, lines overheat, get ice-coated• Problems: line capacity including thermal limits,

line sag, wind induced oscillations, flashover, corona, solar flares (~7% loss --- better cables? superconductor cable?) Up to now, it has been almost impossible to foresee the temperature

distribution along the cable route, so that the maximum applicable current load was usually set as a compromise between understanding of operation conditions and risk minimization. The availability of industrial Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) systems that measure in real time temperatures all along the cable is a first step in monitoring the transmission system capacity. This monitoring solution is based on using passive optical fibers as temperature sensors, either integrated directly inside a high voltage cable or mounted externally on the cable insulation. Source Wikipedia

• Harmonics and Phase unbalance• Command and Control; sense, reconnect, • Hackers and security


Grid Stability

• All generators must be in synchronism• All generators must be in phase• All generators should supply the same voltage• In practice these conditions do not always apply

Synchronous motors operate at low phase shiftVoltage and power drawn are interrelated too much power drain can cause failure

Multi-phase lines may have differential unbalance due to phase angle loading

Apply capacitors to give a leading power angle

Requires high speed sensor acquisition and a high speed real-time system to close the loop esp. near instability: greater operating margin without hurting the safety factor.

Operating point


Timing (from Amin)

1-hour-ahead Assure adequacy of resources Identify system bottlenecks

5-minute Assure reliability, efficiency Update control parameters and limits. Look-ahead (about 10 to 20 minutes) Alert system operator and/or hour-ahead cycle

1-minute Maintain efficiency and reliability, as per the 5-minute cycle. Adapt the more recent models

2-second Collect/validate data for use by control area or interconnection including data acquired in the 10-millisecond cycle (PMUs). Perform closed loop controls (Area Generation Control, etc.) Adapt control parameters and limits for faster cycles

1-second Control extended transients (secondary voltage control, etc.) Adapt control parameters and limits for faster cycles

100-millisecond Control imminent system instabilities including execution of intelligent Special Protection Schemes (iSPS) based on adaptive models or criteria identified by slower cycles.

10-millisecond Perform faster intelligent protection actions (load shedding, generation rejection, system separation)


IT and the Smart Grid: two views

Smart Energy Delivery

Smart use of electricity

Few playersHuge capital investment

All “Silicon Valley” playing

Smart Grid = old grid + Internet

Smart Grid = AI embedded into the Grid

Supply Demand


Principles of a New Electricity Constitution

• Require Fundamentally Higher Distribution Reliability Standards • Compensate Utilities Based on their Reliability, Efficiency and Customer Service Quality• Enable Municipalities to Control Their Electricity Distribution Infrastructure• Eliminate Restrictions on Smart Microgrids• Provide all Consumers with Time-of-Use Electricity Rates• Establish Truly Competitive Retail Electricity Service Markets

The Goal of the New Grid

Dept of Energy


A high altitude view: The Open Smart Grid

• We are not designing a technical system, primarily• We are designing a new cyber-physical economy (or

“a new playing field”)• Multiple players• Competing interests• No central control• The problem with economies is they sometimes go

screwy• We do not understand systems of this complexity at

theoretical level• This one needs to work. (nice if the other ones did

too..)

• ( from J WroclawskI, ISI)


The Target Smart Grid

Steve Pullins, Team Leader for the Modern Grid Initiative at NETL (National Energy Technology Laboratory) notes that there are seven characteristics to a smart grid1. Motivates and incorporates consumers2. Accommodates a wide variety of generation and

storage3. Accommodates competitive markets4. Resists attack5. Matches power quality to needs6. Optimize assets7. Is self-healing


Bumps on the road to a Smart-Grid

from Clark Gellings, VP of Technology Innovation at EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute). Load is growing about twice as fast as transmission

capacity, and has been for over 10 years. Lots of congestion. We’ve modernized virtually every industry in the U.S. except this one –

It is mechanically controlled, No sensors, No information technology, No digitization, It can’t heal itself, We get information about problems too late. And that is just the beginning

This is the IT/Smart Grid Research Agenda.


Smart Grid Summary

Sense Conditions/Overloads anywhere Load distribution Line-balance in a multi-phase supply Phase angle control Over-current Level of harmonics Sensing: e.g. transformer oil temperature Local outage control Predict the daily and seasonal loads

– short term prediction e.g. tomorrow’s weather, Wildfires, Ice-storms Earthquakes

Take action


Digital Grid

• The digital grid does not refer to the electrical current. It refers instead to an essentially a self-diagnosing grid infrastructure consisting of intelligent digital sensors.

• The architecture also includes real-time decision support for customers and utilities.

• For example, this often includes smart appliances and thermostats that can automatically throttle energy consumption during peak load periods to avoid the necessity of rolling blackouts, etc.

• Utilities will generally also move towards demand-response pricing models, so that variable rates apply to energy depending on the overall load on the grid (e.g., it will be cheaper to do a load of wash at night during low demand periods).

• It is also possible to build better security into such a grid than currently exists.

• But some want to transmit pulses of energy -- if we had storage


New Functions

• Remote meter reading • New meters and switches for selective

“shutouts” down to within the home or office• Functions enabled by ubiquitous sensing• New appliances with power cost functions• Proactive control by the utility eg It turns

up/down the thermostat via “Zigbee”• Fault detection, repair and recovery

• Two way power eg use your Prius for storage


Smart Meter

• Olden days: a person read the meter monthly• Now, smart meters can be read much more often• What can you find out if you mine this data? A great

deal• The Honeywell research on the instrumented house

Mats by each bed, measure when coffee is made, take showers etc to get a load profile

Utility could do experiments• What if such data were widely available?

– Older people would say no– Young people, the Google generation, may not care about privacy – Use of the data in social networking– Drive for the common good – Block parties to celebrate the biggest energy saver in the

neighborhood– Finding marijuana farms by monitoring 24/7 electricity usage?

• Is this all good?


What is tomorrow’s meter

• The meter is multi-functional:• A power measurer

a LAN controller probably

• A tarriff indicator• A cell phone for calling home and for remotely

loading software a secure cell phone

• An ad hoc network router on a broadcast wireless r.f. band

• A security system with security detection rules with security mitigation rules

• The meter is a now a very complex device and the key to Utilities entering the home, business.

See

http://www.sce.com/nrc/videos/smartconnect/smartconnect.html


Energy dashboards for your home

http://earth2tech.com/2009/04/14/10-energy-dashboards-for-your-home/


Google

http://www.google.org/powermeter/images/howitworks.gif


Information Technology

In the beginning, there were serially reused big expensive computers that held “corporate” information

Then multi-terminal time shared computers to give access to corporate information

Then small real-time computersThen non-TCP/IP networked

computers for business, IBM in 1974 mantra was DB/DC

Then the IBM Personal Computer

Then Internetted PCsThen Cloud Computing that

comprises blocks of computers holding “corporate” information

Moore’s Law has reduced the cost of hardware by a factor of 2 every 18 months for~40 years

Throwing hardware at a problem is a good thing

Software costs have risen.

The lines of code per day has remained the same while the cost of a programmer has risenA suite of VLSI CAD tools is $1 million per user + maintenance

Clouds: single clouds and clouds of clouds


All new applications always use the latest version of IT’s hot topics

Hot Topics Today

The Web Federated Services Cloud Computing Cybersecurity AgentsSystems of Systems SOA SAAS JAVA AJAX XML DAML RTOS


The World Wide Web

• Everything is stored, • Everything is available --- if you can get the URL to it• The WWW has changed

everything in IT• The WWW has, by design, Redundant Multi-Path Routing

Note• The Web is built on the voice based phone system that was designed for the minimal # of switches between subscribers, therefore it has a high physical internal connectivity

Webearth from www.ibiblio.org/.../de2007/webearth.jpg


The US Grid


Grid and Internet Networks

• The Grid and the Internet are networks. The Grid is partially a graph, partially tree-structured

• Node connectivity, k = ~2.7 The distribution of k is a power law

• Both Grid and Internet are “small world” networks “by design” Path length is about the log of the number of nodes Sociology showed 6 nodes from anyone in the US to

anyone else• In both :--- • Failures occur when a node is overloaded

This causes the load to be taken up by other nodes that get overloaded and fail etc., etc.

• Failures can be caused by taking physical action• Failures can be induced by software


A Top Level Issue

• The Grid grew incrementally around big ac power stations that were not too far apart geographically Big users relocated near big sources of power

– 1900 Carborundum to Niagara Falls– 2000 Google to Bonneville

• You have just seen the Grid and the Internet Not best for fault isolation, recovery

• Is the Grid topology the best one?


IT: Scaled, Layered Architecture

Get sensor data from Grid and from ResidencesPut commands for control

Store User data, usage history, fiduciary, Serbanes-Oxley

Billing through Google Smart two-way Meters

Generators, substations, line state, switchgear, connections to businesses, homes

Application Layer

Middleware Layer

Physical Layer

The Electrical Grid

The Internet

The Grid

Grid and Cloud Computing

Apps

Faster response

Slower response


Smart Energy Web Vision

Cap banks Reclosers Switches Sensors Transformers Meters Storage

Substation Wires Customers

Servers Data storageWeb

presentmentTransactions Modeling

Smart agents

Intelligence

Energyinfrastructure1

Communications infrastructure

2

Computing / information technology

3

Business applications –“Smart EnergyWeb”

4

Generation / supply

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Energy information network

Fiber/MPL RF Mesh Home Area Network (HAN)

Broadband WWAN 3G Cellular


SCADA

• SCADA stands for Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition. It generally refers to an industrial control system: a computer system monitoring and controlling a process. The process can be industrial, infrastructure or facility based industrial processes include those of manufacturing, production, power generation, fabrication, and refining, and may run in continuous, batch, repetitive, or discrete modes source Wikipedia: SCADA Real time control, Real time operating systems, Embedded processors Technically the technology is real-time programming of

embedded processors, interrupt processors, with time critical programs in very low level languages including as low as Assembler and even in native instruction language.

Generally task switching in Windows and MacOS are not fast enough, nor is Linux or UNIX. Use proprietary RTOS eg from robotics or write your own monitor


Grid Problems IT and the SMART GRID

Supplying enough clean power

Base power Fast reacting power Distributed power

Distributing the power to the user

Minimizing outagesSmooth recovery methodsDistributed ControlSecurityMicro and Mini-gridsAdvanced Power MeteringSystemic control of power

usage by consumers--really local brown-outs

Measure Everything

• The Grid fails when there is a current overload --- sense the voltage amplitude and current phase everywhere, GPS located, in real time• Prevention of cascading faults --- AI, modeling and real time prediction, million element simulation, non-linear d.e.’s • Prevent too much reactive power --- add in the right sense, replace capacitors• Prevent Instability when the solar and/or wind farm percentage exceed 10 to 15%

• solar and wind are harmonically impure and have large amplitude fluctuations • added power must be locally phased and synchronized to milli-degrees

• Connect the Grid for Data. Connect via Internet or via the power lines? Guaranteed delivery? • Security Once connected, the Grid becomes the Ideal Target for Terrorists so there are immense Security problems


Agents

• Old idea going back to Actor ideas in the ’70’s

• More and more popular, many conferences today

• Not used in a big system as far as I know Eg WWMCCS, Air Traffic Control … yet

• Can you guarantee stability of a network of agents??

• Was the recent Wall Street crash due to Agents going unstable?

• Azimov’s Laws for Agents, anyone?


IT Research-Smart Meters

Design your own meter Extend the AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure)

protocol, 15 minute to 15 second meter-reading, prioritization

Deliverer’s side– “Brown out” --- but not too brown

Design of Appliances that can accept a degree of browning

Consumers side– Smart thermostat, smart everything– Help with tariffs– Time of day tariffs

Meter becomes a mini-command center inside a house Multi-modality Data Mining to augment smart metering Tough business to enter


IT Research-Comm, Networks

Carriers Use Internet or use data over wire Need an alternate path if using Internet

– If power grid goes down, the Internet goes down!!!

– But the Grid wires stay up, perhaps a bit disconnected

– Trade-off, merge?

Is Internet fast enough? Maybe have to have reserved capacity

– Reservation Protocol see ISI web siteHacker-proof?


IT Research-Security

• Internetting VASTLY increases the security risk National Enterprise vulnerability

• So does the use of cloud computing• The Hacker and terrorist problem

Denial of service attacks, malware of all kinds

• Guaranteed-Secure kernel? Not Windows, not even Unix, not even Linux! Maybe VM

• Data Detect via normal security mechanisms• Add additional authorization layer based on defined

policies• AI: Use the intent of the message bearing in mind

the current state to do security??


IT Research Areas - Faults

• Look at the Network Flow of current• Detect incipient fault using a fast simulator• Predict its extent and effect• Build protective isolation ring• Selective shut down based on the prediction• Some assets cannot easily be shut down e.g. a

nuclear plant KEY ISSUE: Fault propagation time vs

Internet time• Detection of multiple synchronous faults (the Al

Queda attack problem)


IT Research-Recovery

• Smart Autonomous Restoration of Service Smart for user

– Bring up critical first Smart for supplier

– Depends on type of asset– 40-minutes to bring base station on line– 0-time for solar if the sun is shining

• Don’t overload while restoring• Done today largely by human control


IT Research-Decision Support

Decision Support Tools Automation

supervision eg dispatching

Supervisory function on operations

Better Visualization of data for decision makers

Hierarchies of Decisions; some automated some human

Useful Decision Support tools Useful Decision Support tools do notdo not make decisionsmake decisions – – peoplepeople do do

Tools assist with four functions:Tools assist with four functions:

1.1. Identifying/assembling promising Identifying/assembling promising alternative courses of actionalternative courses of action

2.2. Determining detailed case-specific Determining detailed case-specific requirements and implications of requirements and implications of competing alternatives competing alternatives

3.3. Assessing relative tradeoffs (e.g., Assessing relative tradeoffs (e.g., costs, benefits, risks...) of costs, benefits, risks...) of alternatives alternatives

4.4. Formulating personalized metrics Formulating personalized metrics and triggers for future “continue and triggers for future “continue vs. revise” decisions regarding vs. revise” decisions regarding adopted choicesadopted choices


Generate all

feasible solutions

Generate all

feasible solutions

Roll out implications of

standard rules and procedures

Roll out implications of

standard rules and procedures

Explain reasons and constraints

Explain reasons and constraintsExplore

alternative

options

Explore alternati

ve options

Drill down into

alternatives

Drill down into

alternatives

Explore spatio-temporal data

Explore spatio-temporal data

Understand...• What happened• Why it happened• How to affect it

Choose or create good visualizations

Choose or create good visualizations Manage, query, mine

streaming data from >10M live or simulated entities

Fast, accurate adaptation; less user load, more quality• Smart alerting of changed situations• Multiple options consider ripple effects• Understand who’s affected, notify

accordingly• Rapidly resynchronize

Recognize models stray from realityAnalyze risk; avoid blundersLeverage the intelligence of users

Recognize models stray from realityAnalyze risk; avoid blundersLeverage the intelligence of users

Outperformed competition in gov’t tests by 60-80% on 98%

of test suite

Outperformed competition in gov’t tests by 60-80% on 98%

of test suite

Collaboratively share and

publish results and comments

Attach machine-interpretable annotations

to views and data

Find others with relevant knowledge

Find others with relevant knowledge


Cloud Computing

• The cost of building maintaining and running your own computational/business facility is too high and getting higher.

• Revert to a new version of the original computing model now called “The Cloud” containing a network of thousands of computers, Unix boxes, PCs and Macs.

• You rent a piece of it • Clouds can be networked to give clouds of clouds

• Major Issues Availability and loading Cloud reliability Cloud security

– See Sun’s http://blogs.sun.com/gbrunett/entry/cloud_security_webinar_on_tuesday


IT Research- Demographics

• How will people respond to the system? Ignore after a few weeks? …(the 1960’s

experience in the UK) Embrace the technology? (today’s web

savvy population, social networking?)

• How will Utilities respond?


IT Research-Option Trading

• Utilities buy and sell power• New players entering especially

renewables• Formerly regulated now more and more

de-regulated • Suppliers will game the system • New ENRONs will arise• Energy hedge funds• Fortunes to be made --- and lost