# Presentation: 506335

## Visualization Opportunities with Next-Generation Power Grid Communications

**Visualization Opportunities with Next-Generation ****Power Grid Communications**

**Fall VAC Consortium Meeting, October 5, 2006**

**School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science**
**Washington State University**
**Pullman, Washington USA **

**http://gridstat.net**** **

## Outline

- Limitations of today’s power grid communications
- GridStat
- Visualization opportunities

- Dave Bakken

- © 2006 Washington State University

## Rationale for Better Communications

- US Electric Power Communications System is a very limited
- Built in 1960s, not updated meaningfully (no industry investment)
- Hardwired, inflexible, slow, crude SCADA “polling”
- Resulting **situation awareness is bleak (“flying blind”)**
- Strong contributing factor in _all_ recent blackouts (US, Italy, ...)
- Greatly limits better control and protection schemes
- Protection & control are local, yet power dynamics are grid-wide!  (ouch!)
- _Other critical infrastructures (CIs) generally not much better_...
- Clark Gellings, EPRI (US)
*“**The ultimate challenge in creating the power delivery system of the 21st century is in the development of *_*a communications infrastructure that allows for universal connectivity*_*.”*
*“**In order to create this new power delivery system, what is needed is a *_*national electricity-communications superhighway*_* that links generation, transmission, substations, consumers, and distribution and delivery controllers.”*
- GridStat has been designed and built as this comm. superhighway

- Dave Bakken

- © 2006 Washington State University

## GridStat in a Nutshell

- History
- In development since 2000 with EE Power Researchers collab.
- First demo (at NIST) 2002
- Ongoing tech eval demo with Avista live data
- Hopefully soon in EIOC, WSU, ...
- Funding from NIST, NSF (2), DoE, DHS, Avista
- TCIP NSF Center for Cyber-Security and Power Grid
- GridStat: middleware for delivery of operational status data
- Flexible: add subscribers in software
- Quality of Service: timeliness guarantees
- Efficient: multicast and rate filtering
- Multiple redundant data paths managed transparently
- Can have correlated delivery of PMU data (filter in/out same readings)

- Dave Bakken

- © 2006 Washington State University

## Basic GridStat Functionality

**Publishers**

**Subscribers**

- GridStat  Management

- ...

- ...

- Wide Area
- Computer Network

- Dave Bakken

- © 2006 Washington State University

**Notes:**
We will now look at GridStat’s basic functionality.
The purpose of the GridStat framework is to deliver status events from publishers to subscribers
For example, a power generator might publish its present generation, its projected generation, and other operational items of interest.
A breaker or other circuit element might output its open/closed status.
An area controller might output key control decisions it makes that affects power dynamics.  This would allow other participants to know that a controller’s decision was responsible for changes in dynamics, rather than having to infer or guess this.
.... And of course there are many other kinds of publishers possible.
An Area Controller of course subscribes to many status events.  GridStat allows it to easily subscribe to many such events outside its domain that it could not monitor with today’s SCADA systems (at least not without great cost).
Load following and other advanced grid services need to track status information from many participants, much of it not readily available.
The Department of Homeland Defense might set up a critical infrastructure protection operations center to track all kinds of events regarding critical infrastructures.
... And of course there are many other kinds of subscribers possible.
GridStat also has a management layer that controls the wide area computer network to provide the required quality of service (QoS). (Note that this is *not* control of the grid itself: that is the function of subscriber applications.
Publishers provide to the management layer their QoS requirements,
as do subscribers.  The management systems then uses this information to best provide the required QoS to all the participants.

## GridStat’s architecture

- Leaf QoS Broker

- Leaf QoS Broker

- QoS Broker

- GridStat delivers status events from publishers to subscribers

- Dave Bakken

- © 2006 Washington State University

**Notes:**
Clouds different administration organizations
Publisher might be a breaker somewhere
Subscriber might be a control center
	The control center might again be a publisher of some of its calculation
A subscriber may also be a publisher
Communication resources need to be managed
Role of the QoS to manage security, trust, etc

## Visualization Opportunities

- Next-generation power grid needs visualization to enable operators to process* much *more data from *many* more sources
- Operations all across a grid can affect a utility’s stability
- Status data are correlated thru physics, but correlations largely unknown or not fully understood
- Visualization can let operators and regulators/monitors visualize & drill down
- Power disturbances (and early signs thereof)
- IT failures
- Cybersecurity incidents
- and *correlations* of these

- Dave Bakken

- © 2006 Washington State University

## For More Info

- www.gridstat.net
- See paper:
- “A Failure to Communicate: Next-Generation Communication Requirements, Technologies, and Architecture for the Electric Power Grid”,  *IEEE Power & Energy Magazine*, March/April 2005,47-55.
-  I have some printed...

- Dave Bakken

- © 2006 Washington State University