Business Intelligence: Solving Smart Grid Data Management Challenges - Sponsored Whitepaper

Christine Hertzog | Managing Director, Smart Grid Library

• The fleet manager of a municipality’s electric vehicles (EVs) uses historical data along with predictive software to conduct “carbitrage” and create detailed charge and discharge schedules for the fleet to sell back electricity to the grid and create a new source of revenues for its constituents.

Current Smart Grid projects include utility initiatives that are focused on upgrading the existing transmission and distribution networks with intelligent electronic devices or IEDs and smart meters to deliver remote monitoring and management capabilities. The volumes of data that IEDs accumulate will challenge human capacities to assess and respond, so operations centers for utilities, transmission companies, and power generators must rely on computing power to assist in intelligent management of the giga, tera, and petabytes of data routinely collected. Analysis of this data can be used to develop predictive maintenance schedules for transmission and distribution assets and insights into grid stability. Real-time analytics will automatically trigger reactions in response to critical conditions that threaten the reliability or safety of the grid and avoid brownouts and blackouts.

The growing number of distributed generation and microgrid facilities also presents challenges and opportunities in data management for power markets and utilities. For over a century, business models and operations have been based on centralized power generation with extensive investments continued on next page

in transmission assets to bring electricity to commercial, industrial, institutional, and residential consumers. Integration of localized renewables and distributed energy storage assets into the grid, co-located with consumers, creates new business needs for software and reliable communications networks to transmit data about asset status and respond to requests to add power to the grid or to island (disconnect) microgrids from the larger grid to reduce electricity demand at critical times. Since electricity moves at the speed of light, these transactions must also occur with little or no human intervention, relying on automated business intelligence solutions to maintain grid stability.