Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Contents
Meter data management systems: a critical enabler in smart grid implementations Core elements The five-level MDMS capability assessment framework
Level 1: Commercial and industrial (C&I) meter-to-cash processes Level 2: Residential meter-to-cash, customer choice, conservation and demand-reduction rates Level 3: Smart metering data collection, field services and customer service processes Level 4: Smart metering operations and infrastructure management Level 5: Smart grid enablement
3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10
Why Accenture?
11
Core elements
The specific architecture of an MDMS depends on the software environment provided by the vendor and the characteristics of each utilitys unique deployment. However, at its core, an MDMS consists of several elements that are common to all such systems and are designed to facilitate predefined functions. These functions include:
A centralized data repository for Meter read management components
to validate, estimate, edit (VEE) and apply utility-specific or regulationspecific business logic to meter readings.
An engine to calculate energy usage,
systems that consume processed meter data, such as billing, settlements, load forecasting, asset management and customer Web portals. Figure 1 illustrates one example of MDMS architecture, including its touch points with upstream collection systems and downstream enterprise systems.
meter readings.
Adapters to collection systems that
enable raw data collected from smart meters to be loaded into the MDMS, while also enabling controls to be performed.
Meter
OMS/DMS
Meter
Meter
Meter
ADCS = AMI data collection system; AMI = Advanced metering infrastructure; C&I = Commercial and industrial; DR = Demand response; DG = Distributed generation; DMS = Distribution management system; EMS = Energy management system; ESB = Enterprise service bus; NMS = Network management system; OMS = Outage management system; SCADA = Supervisory control and data acquisition. 4
Smart grid data management, thirdparty application development framework. CIMinspired models, open interfaces Bi-directional SMI integration and control/process automation, CIMbased interfaces
5 4 3
Technical scope
SMI collection aggregation, management and service-order integration Large-scale interval data management C&I interval data management C&I meter-tocash processes
Functional scope
Notes: CIM = Common information model; SMI = Smart metering initiative; C&I = Commercial and industrial. 5
interval usage and demand data. This data includes collection, storage, VEE and calculation of complex billing determinants. At the same time, utilities using existing applications for MDMS-type functions may find they encounter further challenges from the introduction of new rates, regulatory changes that extend the footprint of interval-metered customers, and/or limitations in their existing systems. To date, MDMS have largely been used to manage low volumes of large customers with interval meters and complex rates. AMI brings a very high volume of interval data, with different rates and regulations, and the existing MDMS is unlikely to be sufficiently scalable or flexible to handle this change. For all these reasons, utilities may choose to deploy a specific MDMS for the relevant activities.
Case study on the benefits of MDMS: Ontario local distribution companies (LDCs) and the Ontario Smart Metering Initiative (SMI) program1
Under the Ontario Smart Metering Initiative Program, the central/ provincial MDMS operated by the independent electricity system operator enables consistent application of validation, estimation and editing (VEE) rules and bill determinant calculations for the Ontario Regulated Price Plana three-tier, time-of-use (TOU) tariff mandated by the Ontario Energy Board.2 Currently, the operational scope of the provincial MDMS is limited to residential and small business customers with demand below 50 kilowatts (kW). These customers are metered on a single-channel, interval-usage basis typically hourly. As a result, while utilities may deploy smart meters to all their new and existing customers (including general service above 50 kW and large C&I), the processing, data management and complex bill determinant calculation functions for multiple channels of 15-minute or more granular interval readings will not be supported by the independent electricity system operators meter data management and repository (MDM/R) for some time to come. As this situation demonstrates, LDCs (utilities) facing infrastructure limitations in their ability to process interval data and calculate bill determinants for their largest C&I customer base can benefit from deploying a specific MDMS to support these functions.
Separation of concerns
An MDMS provides separation of concerns in a utilitys applications architecture. The MDMS can handle all the responsibilities related to meter data and can serve as a one-stop point for all current and historical meter usage information, thereby establishing consistent processes for publishing meter data to users of the information within the enterprise.
Customer service
MDMS can help utilities to engage their customers, respond accurately to billing inquires, enhance customer satisfaction and pave the way for higher rates of customer retention. It can also enable utilities to educate customers about their patterns of energy use, associated costs and environmental impacts, and can help encourage a consumer culture of energy efficiency and conservation. Customer web portals are commonly used to provide customers with aggregate energy usage data, detailed interval information and bill-to-date information.
Emerging trends
Emerging trends, such as demand response and distributed generation, introduce potential complexities in meter data management and billing that may expand the capabilities required from MDMS implementations. For instance, the need to support residential demand-response programs may require the ability to evaluate customer participation using:
Demand-response event information. Customer override of load control
Distributed generation programs will also require additional capabilities. Allowing homes, farms and businesses to generate their own power from renewable sources, (such as wind, water, solar and agricultural biomass) and distributing any excess electricity back to the grid for credit will require:
The ability to meter and store at
functions (whereby the consumer is compensated for energy delivered onto the grid using a separate generation tariff). Utilities whose business drivers include billing, customer service and efficacy analysis for their demand-response and distributed generation programs might also consider an appropriate MDMS implementation to provide these benefits.
least two channels of energy interval data (import and export values) for all customers.
Net metering (consumer is billed for
sophisticated methodologies that compare a number of similar nonevent days adjusted for weather.
Comparisons to the baseline.
estimation routines that account for energy imports from customers (and can accommodate negative net energy usage in an interval).
Association of generation pricing
Level 3: Smart metering data collection, field services and customer service processes
Smart metering infrastructure data management operational data store
AMI data gives the utility information to unlock greater value. This information is only available and usable, however, if the utility has a fully functional and accessible data store. This requirement has been a key driver behind many MDMS implementations as part of smart metering initiatives. The information provided covers not only interval energy usage, but also status, events and alarms. Even utilities in regions with a provincial or central MDMS deployment (e.g., a single MDMS implementation for the entire regulatory jurisdiction such as a state, province or country that provides a common data repository, bill determinant calculations and customer usage presentment for all utilities and customers in the jurisdiction) have benefited from the operational visibility and efficiencies achieved from their own smart metering infrastructure data. One such benefit is the ability to monitor and act on health and tamper information reported by smart meters. Enabling such functionality for all utilities would typically be beyond the scope of a central MDMS implementation.
with service-order management systems to automate service order creation and field dispatchfor instance, to investigate a low-battery warning reported by a smart meterand the ability to optimize processes when customers move premises (using the latest readings in the operational data store/MDMS for initial/final reads).
This use of an MDMS as an operational data store for collection aggregation has helped the utility achieve tighter control over the quality and consistency of data reported by various vendor systems. Furthermore, the early identification of data quality issues (such as high numbers of missing reads or other anomalies) has enabled the utility to attempt remediation before the data is reported to the independent electricity system operator and is presented to customers.
Collection management
Collection management refers to the ability of an MDMS to provide sophisticated capabilities such as read arbitration, read integrity inspection, data rejection, data aggregation, scheduling and service level agreement (SLA) monitoring across multiple smart metering infrastructure head-ends and systems. This is a key benefit of MDMS implementations in terms of technical scoping, particularly where utilities expect to deploy multiple smart meter systems to cover their territory.
metering infrastructure system requires that the meter be read following the operation of the RCD switch to verify RCD state. Other examples of process automation enabled by the MDMS include:
On-demand reads initiated by
to dispatch meter technicians to the field and review trends that may indicate quality issues with a particular batch or type of meter.
Detection of tamper and theft from
customer service.
Outage pings. Smart meter configuration and
indicators reported by meters on a distribution feeder or secondary to identify the need for vegetation trimming.
Integration with intrusion detection
and management.
systems to notify a potential security breach in the smart metering infrastructure network (such as unauthorized access at the meters optical probe).
Calculation and reporting of reliability
Standards-based interfaces
Given the tight integration and dependence on process automation to facilitate many of the level 4 capabilities, a standards-compliant MDMS with, for example, IEC 61968/ CIM or Multispeak interfaces to enterprise systemsproviding abstraction from vendor specificitycan be a key component of the overall enterprise architecture, helping to ensure flexibility and extensibility through the life of the program.
quality, including over-voltage, under-voltage, phase voltage imbalance, sudden voltage changes, excessive harmonics, frequency fluctuations and unintended-islanding. While sound electricity network design can reduce or eliminate most of these issues, the distribution company will still have to maintain the visibility of distributed generation sources on the grid, while also monitoring the distribution network constantly for voltage, power-quality, frequency and other instrumentation. The MDMS can store metering data related to distributed generation, including load profiles, inactivity periods and quality of supply data. This kind of information can be used by other external systems to compute data analysis and correlation, providing valuable inputs for the improvement of grid operations.
participation levels on a feeder to support distribution operations by temporarily switching a subset of customers to another feeder during a planned outage or to manage the peak load expected on the basis of a weather forecast.
Predictive analysis of the capacity
available for each demand response program to support the utilitys ability to bid demand-response as a resource in wholesale markets for capacity, energy and ancillary services.
10
groups can also use the same information to achieve a number of benefits. These include understanding the operational characteristics (such as loading, losses, phase imbalance and utilization) of the distribution network assets, optimizing the utilization of existing assets and the ability to defer capital expenditure for new assets. An MDMS with the ability to track grid assets, network hierarchy and data reported by grid devices should be a further integral part of smart grid architectures, and of the overall solution for advanced asset management applications.
Extensibility
In the context of smart grid enterprise architecture, the MDMS may not be the only solution for implementing all smart grid analytical applications. What is important, however, is that the MDMS performs an enabling role for these functions. From a technical perspective, this role implies that the MDMS needs to be an open system, with common information model (CIM)-inspired data models and standards-compliant, well-defined interfaces to which third-party application program developers can easily interconnect.
Why Accenture?
Accenture is already applying its industry-leading expertise to help many major utilities worldwide identify the benefits of major investments in assets such as CIS, smart meters, smart grids and enterprise asset management (EAM), and then articulate those benefits in a robust business case. As we undertake these projects, we are differentiated by our holistic understanding of the business benefits that utilities can achieve from the combination of customer information systems, MDM/R, and smart meter/ grid infrastructures. Accentures meter data management system (MDMS) capabilities assessment framework is a demonstrated methodology to help utilities evaluate the technical and functional impacts of their CIS, smart meter, and smart grid modernization initiatives, and assess, in detail, the potential benefits that can be achieved through implementation of an MDMS. While no single commercial MDMS supports all of the capabilities that we describe in this paper, the potential benefits are wide-rangingeven for those utilities and local distributors in provinces with centralized MDM/R implementations. To find out more about how our framework could help your utility on its journey to achieve high performance, please contact:
North America
Dileep.Rudran dileep.rudran@accenture.com
Asia Pacific
David Lester david.m.lester@accenture.com
11
With 100 smart grid projects in more than 20 countries, one of Accentures key focus areas is in helping our utilities clients with the transformation to a smarter grid. From generation to in-home energy management, from strategic blueprints to operational data analytics, and from the boardroom to the operations center, Accenture offers the skills and experience that can help utilities frame their vision of a smarter grid and then achieve its many benefits.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 211,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the worlds most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$21.6 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2010. Its home page is www.accenture.com.
Copyright 2011 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.
References
1 Ontario, Ministry of Energy, Smart Meters, www.mei.gov.on.ca/en/energy/ electricity/?page=smart-meters. 2 Ontario Ministry of Energy, Smart Meters and Time of Use Pricing, www.mei.gov.on.ca/en/energy/ conservation/smartmeters; The Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) Smart Metering Entity, www.smi-ieso.ca. 3 Keller, J. and Krposki, B., Understanding Fault Characteristics of Inverter-Based Distributed Energy Resources, NREL Technical Report TP-550-46698, January 2010. 4 Baran, M.E. and El-Markaby, I. Fault Analysis on Distribution Feeders with DG, IEEE Transaction, 2005.
WSS141 | 7-1589