IntelliGrid Architecture

The IntelliGrid Architecture was sponsored by the Electricity Innovation Institute (E2I), a member of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) family members. The IntelliGrid Project was funded by the Consortium of Electric Infrastructure to Support a Digital Society (CEIDS).

The IntelliGrid Project has two objectives:

1) Power System Functions - determining the Business Needs of power system operations requirements for the power system of today and in the future, including self-healing grid concepts.

2) IntelliGrid Architecture - using these requirements as the basis for the information requirements necessary to support the envisioned power system of the future, building toward a Strategic Vision, using a Tactical Approach with migration paths and technology independent techniques, based on Standards and Best Practices. Recommendations are focused on the different users of the IntelliGrid Architecture so that they can understand and pursue their appropriate goals.

These two objectives validate that the future energy system is really an architected blend of two infrastructures: an energy delivery infrastructure and a supporting distributed computing infrastructure. This vision of two blended infrastructures maintains the view that progress is necessary within both of these infrastructures to effectively create the envisioned future energy system.

The primary vision of the IntelliGrid Project is to provide rigorously defined links between the information engineering requirements of the Power System Functions and the IntelliGrid Architecture. These links will permit power industry users to refer to the IntelliGrid Architecture and receive recommendations on technologies and best practices for all of their information requirements.

IntelliGrid Architecture Project Team

The IntelliGrid Architecture Project was developed by a large team of experts. The IntelliGrid Project was managed by General Electric, with major contributions from Utility Consulting International (UCI), SISCO, Lucent, EnerNex, Hypertek, and many Stakeholders. As seen in the figure, the process involved two types of experts: the power system function experts and the architecture experts:

1. Power System Function Experts. Described existing and future functions related to power system operations which rely on exchanging information across distributed systems. These functions were captured in narratives by power system experts and analyzed through the use of Unified Modeling Language (UML) Use Cases. Each function was deconstructed into a series of steps; each of the steps were then linked to an IntelliGrid Environment that best captured the information requirements (configuration, quality of service, security, and data management) for that step.

2. IntelliGrid Architecture Experts. Developed the IntelliGrid Architecture based on the information requirements of the power system functions, and linked the IntelliGrid Environments to the recommended state-of-the-art standards and best practices.

Figure 1: Two Primary Purposes of the IntelliGrid Project: Descriptions of Existing and Future Power System Functions and the IntelliGrid Architecture