All Segments of Our Industry are Seeing Improvements from intelligent grid technology. However, one sector that doesn't get much mention is planning. Planners are taking advantage of tech toys like the rest of us, and it is just in time to take on the challenges they face.

The role of today's planners is far more complex than that of prior generations. The planner must consider required new facilities, but also identify which parts of the aging infrastructure need immediate replacement and which can be deferred without compromising reliability. The planner has to forecast load growth in a marketplace coming to grips with demand response, demand-side management, distributed generation and load shaping, while dealing with new regulations, independent power producers and heightened awareness of system reliability. Add to that the shift away from the individual utility to the regional transmission organization (RTO) notion. It is truly a more complex system than ever before.

SEPARATE PLANNING DEPARTMENTS

Traditional utilities had separate planning departments for transmission and distribution. The first utilities were distribution-oriented, planning for their local customers. Soon thereafter, utilities realized they could help each other if they were interconnected, so a new group of planners emerged.

Today the regulatory climate helps to continue this separation. From a regulatory standpoint, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has jurisdiction over the transmission system, whereas the distribution system typically falls under local authority. Although both share the same ultimate goal of providing reliable electrical power, they come from different vantage points within the enterprise. Sometimes details can get lost within the two segments, if they fail to recognize their commonalities. “It is like a man with two watches who never knows the correct time,” said Randy Berry, AREVA T&D regional vice president of automation sales, North America.

“RTO involvement has increased the planner's regional awareness,” explained Berry. With all the new intelligent equipment being installed on the grid, the models used for system studies have to be as intelligent as the equipment they represent.

“Areva realized utilities have a very good rearview-mirror vision of the system. What they need is a windshield vista of where they are going,” Berry added. Areva's e-terravision has been developed with that approach in mind. The planner can configure the data for past, present or future displays, thereby allowing a host of studies to be presented from an enterprise standpoint rather than a transmission or distribution perspective.

TRACKING CUSTOMER LOAD PROFILES

Exelon's PECO has changed the planner's perspective working from the customer's connection outward, which improves the utility's view of a customer's load profile. Working with Cellnet+Hunt (Alpharetta, Georgia, U.S.), PECO is using automatic meter reading (AMR) technology as part of a pilot program. Cellnet+Hunt owns and operates the AMR system, which is a fixed-wireless network, and PECO purchases meter reads and other information from Cellnet+Hunt.

Glenn Pritchard, project manager, Exelon Energy Delivery, reported, “They [PECO] take interval data from the AMR system and monitor the secondary circuit's feeders with it.”

PECO has found its customers frequently add to their electrical facilities without thinking to notify the utility of the changes. Many times these additions are significant enough to dangerously overload cables and transformers.

“Using OSIsoft's PI Historian to analyze the Cellnet+Hunt AMR data has enabled PECO to determine customer's load profile for the feeder circuits in the pilot program,” explained Pritchard. “It isn't real-time data, but has a sample rate of 18 hours. This is more than sufficient for their needs and developing their models.”

PECO found a sampling of 61 transformers where 11 were overloaded by roughly 160% and 5 were overloaded by 200%. Pritchard said, “The AMR load profile is replacing PECO's traditional planning models (class profiles), which improve how the utility manages the assets and determines what needs to be added, replaced or refurbished.”

PLANNING IN REAL TIME

ETAP (Irvine, California, U.S.) has developed a suite of intelligent software products from a grid perspective. ETAP's approach allows the planner to perform studies on the system while the system is in operation.

“ETAP's software gathers data from systemwide sensors and monitors,” said Tanuj Khandelwal, a senior electrical engineer for ETAP. “The Power System Monitoring and Simulation (PSMS) software uses a graphical monitoring display showing the transmission/distribution system in the familiar one-line diagram style.”

PSMS displays voltages, reactive (kVAR) power flow and real (kW) power flows at each piece of equipment and line. “The one-line diagram is intelligent,” said Khandelwal. “When a component is removed from the system, the planning engineer sees exactly how it impacts the system. PSMS shows what overloads and where the congestion happens.” PSMS provides a network topology with historical data, peak loading, load transfers, generation levels and other electrical parameters.

Utility engineers and operators appreciate the ability to perform switching procedures in the study mode. This allows for a complete dress rehearsal of the circuit manipulation required by the procedure without placing the system in danger. Every step can be checked and verified prior to the actual system outage, assuring there are no surprises when the switch is opened.

ADDING GEOSPATIAL TOOLS

Duke Energy, PacifiCorp, Nashville Electric Service and Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative (NoVEC), working with Integral Analytics, Quanta Technology, ESRI and Advantica, are using nontraditional technology to give the planner a true global view of the grid. Working together, this group developed a software package called Load Spatial Electric Expansion and Risk (LoadSEER), which is a geographic information system (GIS) based on spatial load forecasting and analysis tools.

Gone are the days when a spreadsheet was adequate for systemwide trending analysis. Today's environment requires more sophistication. Advanced software combined with satellite imagery now provides the degree of sophisticated investigation utilities need.

“This is a new generation of spatial analysis, software combined with GIS technology,” said Lee Willis, senior vice president of Quanta Technology. “It makes possible spatial load forecasting and hourly level load (at-risk calculations).”

Randy Rhodes, manager of planning technology at Pacifi-Corp., reported, “LoadSEER accurately predicts where new substations should be located, thereby advancing property purchases and avoiding permitting difficulties. This is especially useful on the Wasatch Front mountain range in Utah, where they are seeing annual summer demand growth of about 5% per year.”

According to Dr. Tom Osterhus of Duke Energy's planning department, the utility is using the LoadSEER program, coupled with consumer data purchased from commercial information services, to estimate load information to the household level. LoadSEER provides a better understanding of the electrical-system usage. It also improves the forecasting of where new growth is likely to occur.