Developing a Distribution Substation Management System
Automated displays for distribution substations will provide early warnings and reduce outage times.
Siemens Corporation, Corporate Technology
Recipient
Berkeley, CA
Recipient Location
7th
Senate District
14th
Assembly District
$499,999
Amount Spent
Completed
Project Status
Project Result
The project completed in March 2019. The final report, [i]A Semantically Integrated Operational Dashboard for the Management of Smart Grid[/i] was received. The Siemens Corporate Technology team is actively looking for partners within Siemens and the utilities in California to run a pilot project to conduct user studies of the developed dashboards with grid operators.
The Issue
As the electric distribution system becomes increasingly complex with the integration of more distributed energy resources, existing distribution automation systems need to be enhanced with functions to manage increasing amounts of renewable energy connected at the distribution level and to provide greater control over the operation of distributed energy resources. Distribution management systems need to automate more monitoring and control operations at substations using standard communication protocols to quickly respond to changes and problems to reduce outage times.
Project Innovation
This project developed a software which can display the current state of the distribution system, detect problems, and automatically suggest potential solutions to reduce outage times. The software also helps automate routine and non-routine engineering and maintenance tasks that are performed on substation equipment, such as monitoring voltage violation.
Project Benefits
Highly automated and efficient grid operation is required to achieve California's energy goals, in particular with respect to the Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act of 2015 (Senate Bill 350) that strives to reach 50 percent renewable energy resources. This project can lead to technological advancement and breakthroughs to overcome barriers in electrical grid automation by demonstrating the potential of semantic technologies for categorizing and processing data, as well as for discovering relationships within a varied data set. This system allows operators to control and further automate routine and non-routine engineering and maintenance tasks that are performed on substations. By making the complex smart grid more accessible for operators, it permits faster resolution of outages, thereby making the grid more maintainable and resilient.
Affordability
A greater degree of automation for grid operation processes leads to reduced grid operation costs that potentially translates into lower rates for California ratepayers.
Reliability
This project developed a software that allows certain grid problems to be resolved automatically, thus reducing power outages.
Energy Security
A greater degree of grid automation enables faster reactions to shifts in electricity production, thereby permitting a higher percentage of distributed renewable energy resources.
Key Project Members
Simon Mayer
Match Partners
Siemens Corporation, Corporate Technology
