Utilities Collaborate on Open-Source Software
The electric utility industry is increasingly challenged by external drivers such as regulatory obligations and mandates as well as competitors who want to disintermediate utility customers from their current energy provider. Distribution system operator (DSO) models and aggregator participation are challenging the status quo for utility business models.
The utility industry must navigate these changes and help to shape the new business models while still providing safe, reliable and affordable energy to customers. At the same time, customer participation should be empowered, so there is reasonable influence on the type of resource consumed, the location of the resource, and who provides the energy. This is extremely challenging to support with a typical utility’s portfolio of operating technologies.
The electric utility industry is increasingly challenged by external drivers such as regulatory obligations and mandates as well as competitors who want to disintermediate utility customers from their current energy provider. Distribution system operator (DSO) models and aggregator participation are challenging the status quo for utility business models.
The utility industry must navigate these changes and help to shape the new business models while still providing safe, reliable and affordable energy to customers. At the same time, customer participation should be empowered, so there is reasonable influence on the type of resource consumed, the location of the resource, and who provides the energy. This is extremely challenging to support with a typical utility’s portfolio of operating technologies.
Systems
Many utilities do not have fully featured distribution management systems (DMSs) in operation yet. Distributed energy resources (DERs) often are installed by third parties without emphasis on grid operational needs and distributed generation impacts. Yet, even with knowledge of and data flowing from the DERs, reliable dispatch of the resources is challenging. Distributed energy resource management systems (DERMs) have been developed to provide this dispatch, but they typically do not integrate effectively with the DMS. Outage management systems (OMSs) also should integrate with the DMS and DERM for resiliency needs, data needs and state awareness. Typically, these are separate systems with disparate and proprietary databases and topologies.
Quite frankly, the state of operational technology options provided to the industry are costly, functionally inadequate, difficult to integrate, and inconsistent across vendor offerings. There are many standards, yet no common element. The industry seems caught in a legacy environment that challenges vendors to forgo their current offerings and redesign them, but to what specific standards or architectures?
