As Demand for Electricity Increases, Utilities Face Challenges to Electricity Delivery. While much of the public discussion has focused on capacity, in terms of generation and transmission, the subtransmission and distribution components of the grid can benefit from significant upgrades as well.

Allegheny Energy (Greensburg, Pennsylvania, U.S.) has undertaken such an upgrade effort in West Virginia through Allegheny Power, the company's electricity-delivery business. Allegheny Power is working to deploy an intelligent distribution system network pilot project that will enable advanced electrical automation and monitoring within the distribution system. By focusing on distribution-side upgrades, Allegheny Power can achieve a modernized electrical grid, one that meets both consumer and regulator demands for reliable, efficient and affordable electricity.

WHAT IS INTELLIGENT DISTRIBUTION?

While advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) is receiving widespread acclaim as the next significant technology infrastructure investment for electric utilities, Allegheny Power is concerned that some AMI deployments could be limited-term investments. Most current AMI systems focus on supporting the integration of data from smart meters, demand management and control through demand response of these devices. However, for many utilities, including Allegheny Power, monitoring and control within the distribution system require data from an increasing number of diverse sensors and devices.

As Allegheny Power charts the future of its distribution systems, the company is working to implement a reliable, secure communications infrastructure that can support circuit-level monitoring and response from a diverse network of sensors, actuators and devices, not just smart meters and demand-management devices. Importantly, this open-architecture solution enables the integration of different devices from different vendors — a situation most utilities face.

This intelligent distribution-system network would provide an open architecture for inclusion of sensors, actuators, smart meters and other devices, regardless of manufacturer and changes in technology. The system must be scaleable to allow for easy incorporation of future system enhancements. Communications architectures must be robust and rely on standard wireless protocols. Distributed field-level computational capacity must be accommodated through inclusion of intelligent network appliances. Finally, a sophisticated security system must prevent unauthorized access.

From a network architecture perspective, the intelligent distribution system network is composed of two principal elements. First are rugged WiFi mesh access points or WiMax base stations to provide a self-healing wireless communications backbone with backhaul capability. Second are rugged intelligent network appliances that can serve as clients in both WiFi mesh and WiMax deployments. These provide the connectivity for non-WiFi and non-WiMax devices to connect into the WiFi mesh or WiMax backbone.

Initial activities by Allegheny Power have primarily focused on WiFi mesh architectures. WiMax deployments are also under consideration and may become more cost effective over time. While WiFi mesh and WiMax technologies are well known in the industry, intelligent network appliances may be less known. Before describing the deployments advanced by Allegheny Power, additional background on these appliances is useful.

INTELLIGENT NETWORK APPLIANCES

Intelligent, reconfigurable appliances enable distributed processing on the network. They provide a platform technology for integration, processing, correlation and communication of data from sensors, meters and other devices spread across the system. Within an intelligent distribution system network, the appliances can reside in mounted enclosures as a super-charged gateway for collecting data from and effectuating control over smart meters and other sensors and actuators placed throughout the distribution circuits and at substations.

Allegheny Power needed an appliance that could create a plug-and-play environment for the integration of sensors, actuators, control devices, control centers and end users. Such a technology would provide computational and networking capacity, and offer a flexible sensor-independent, protocol-independent gateway device that would power the extension of the enterprise network and IT infrastructure to the level of sensors, actuators and other devices and systems, including smart meters. Specifically, in order to power Allegheny Power's intelligent distribution system network concept, intelligent appliances were required that would:

• Enable integration of data from smart meters, energy-management systems, sensors, actuators and other edge-of-network devices and systems

• Support protocol conversion and data transformation (including convergence of data from ZigBee, 900-MHz, or stand-alone sensors or actuators into IP-based WiFi and WiMax networks)

• Support distributed edge-of-network processing capabilities such as complex event processing, event filtering, event notification and data correlation

• Enable distribution of data from and control over edge-of-network devices, which is important for both demand response and system control issues

• Provide an application server for future implementations of autonomous system algorithms.

With these robust requirements in mind, Allegheny Power selected SensorPort intelligent network appliances from Augusta Systems (Morgantown, West Virginia), a provider of intelligent enterprise network technologies, to serve as client devices and to enable non-WiFi and non-WiMax devices to connect into the network backbone.

In terms of hardware, these intelligent network appliances include a standard processor and localized storage capacity, and support a single PC card, which can be WiFi, WiFi mesh or WiMax. They feature extensible input/output capabilities and include, on a standard basis, multiple mini PCI sockets, RS232 serial ports, USB 2.0 ports, a single parallel port, an Ethernet port and a single external connector for all signals.