Historical Perspective

One can consider IntelliGrid Architecture to be the third wave of focused efforts endeavoring to define reusable architectural components for energy enterprise and industry-wide applications. The first two waves of industry efforts were the Integrated Utility Communications Project and the UCA® 2 Effort.

Integrated Utility Communications Project

The first effort was performed through the efforts of the Integrated Utility Communications Project, which initiated by EPRI® in 1986. Through these initial efforts, a cadre of utility domain experts was consulted and their views combined into the first incarnation: UCA(Utility Communications Architecture). What was most impressive about this effort was the top-down, requirements-driven analysis performed by objective professionals in pursuit of a common communications denominator in the utility industry.

UCA 2 Effort

EPRI furthered the effort in a series of tailored collaborations that endeavored to apply the original UCA architecture. As UCA implementations efforts moved forward, improvements and clarifications were made to the document, which resulted in the issuance of enhanced architectural descriptions that became know as UCA 2.0. Crucial to the success of UCA was the involvement of domain experts and developers in the application of the concepts. At this time, EPRI took steps to submit the UCA documents to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Technical Committee 57, where the work was accepted into the IEC 61850 standards process.

These original EPRI efforts succeeded in establishing a direction for the industry and creating momentum toward abstract modeling and interoperability. The IEC 61850 standards are beginning to mature and major vendors are developing products from these standards. In addition, EPRI has worked to develop the Control Center API project into the Common Information Model through contributions to the IEC TC57 standards initiatives. Finally, EPRI has facilitated the formation of a users and vendors association, The UCA International Users Group [1].

More than a dozen years have elapsed since the first UCA effort. During this period two things have become apparent. First, an extraordinary evolution in communications and computing technology has occurred and will continue. Second, the scale and scope of advanced automation extends beyond the standards that have developed for the energy industry. Standards and infrastructure development from a variety of industries must now be included in the design and enhancement of an industry-level architecture for the energy industry. The energy industry architecture must now include standards from information technology, building and home automation, and eCommerce, to name just a few. It is important to now advance the concepts originally conceived and laid down by the UCA into the modern age. The IntelliGrid Architecture project represents this effort.