Over An Hour Had Passed Since The Storm Hit. Dave had been working as a network control engineer for a couple of years; this was the first really big event he'd seen. His job was to get the power back on — safely.

Dave was so busy trying to interpret the flood of SCADA alarms, he was unable to adequately direct field crews and now customer calls were piling in. He was looking for the vital bits of information they often contain, but with the DMS predicting faults, he discovered that customer calls were being sucked into “incident reports” before he could scan the lists.

With 20 feeders out and a major hospital out, and SCADA from two major substations down, it was the worst day Dave had ever experienced. Thank God it was only a simulation.

The rarity of “crisis events” provides little opportunity for us to test staff readiness, systems and the business processes. The last “system black” event here in NSW Australia was in 1964, yet operational staff and their managers must be able to efficiently manage the next one, whenever that may be.

The advent of distribution management systems (DMS) with their electronic-based systems now in distribution control rooms enabled Country Energy to develop a DMS simulator.

The simulator provides a means of preparing operational staff to respond to major incidents and for ensuring that systems, business processes, staff and their management will cope under duress.

DISTRIBUTION SIMULATOR

Simulators have existed for many years for electricity generation and transmission, but have not been viable in electricity distribution until recently. Country Energy worked closely with Bill Tarlinton of Opal Software to develop a distribution simulator for Country Energy.

The simulator was implemented by creating a model of the real-world distribution network. The model provides inputs into a copy of the operational DMS in the form of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) data inputs and customer calls. The person conducting the simulation session can create simulated faults in the network. The model then responds with a simulation of the real-world activity that would result from that fault.

One of the significant issues with operations in electrical distribution networks is the volume of work that can be experienced during a major event. The simulator allows many faults to be created and run concurrently to simulate the typical high volume of work generated during a storm event. Importantly, the simulator allows any number of end users to be interacting with the DMS to test work flow and delegation issues within the control room.

The data required for the simulator network model and the SCADA data simulation is derived from the DMS itself. The Country Energy DMS is the GE ENMAC system and has been in use for four years. The DMS has a full connectivity model of the high-voltage network, including distribution transformer ratings and customer-to-network connection links.

As well as having the ability to inject SCADA inputs by means of SCADA protocol transport, the ENMAC DMS has software interfaces that allow the actions of operators to be sent to the simulator model, as well as providing a means of injecting simulated customer calls for portions of the network without supply.

The load-flow model that underpins the simulation has been geared to work with the radial nature of our distribution networks and is able to provide updates (via SCADA) of feeder loads as time evolves and switching actions occur in the network in real time, an essential requirement to providing a realistic simulation environment.

To use the simulator, a trainer creates scenarios to challenge the trainee with real-life situations. These scenarios progress from simple and non-critical work to complex and critical. The trainer also can provide the interaction required between the trainee and field staff by having all act out their roles, even taking radio and telephone calls.

Country Energy's intention is to take the simulator beyond the initial scope of one-on-one training to group training and testing of operational staff and their management to build their understanding of DMS and the interactions with business processes, safety rules, communications systems and corporate information systems. This will allow accelerated refinement of business processes for rare and unusual events.

Country Energy is at the forefront of the development of distribution simulators. But we'd like to move forward at a pace no one utility can undertake. Contact me to join in expanding our industry's knowledge and ability to perform distribution simulations.

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Dr. Paul James is manager of corporate strategy development at Country Energy in New South Wales, Australia, and was previously involved with the development of information systems that support asset management and the operational environment. paul.james@countryenergy.com.au