OSIsoft, Inc.
PI System Case Study
The PI System revolutionizes one utility’s electric
transmission & distribution power system data
Overview
Country or Region: United States
“We immediately saw major benefits in the PI System and wanted a full-scale
implementation as soon as possible to get the data to the end-users.”
Industry: Transmission and
Project Manager, T&D Utility
Distribution
As with most electric transmission & distribution (T&D) companies, growth does not
come without many challenges, commonly faced by most large utility companies:
diverse data sources in different locations with restricted access; numerous manual
data retrieval processes; with limited ability for people outside the control center to
immediately observe what problems have occurred; and operating in an interactive
environment.
Business Situation
Operators, engineers, managers, and
executives needed an easy way to
visualize the real-time or historical
operations data of the Utility’s
Transmission & Distribution (T&D) power
system, especially during critical
operational periods. The company also
needed a tool to monitor cyber security
assets for compliance with the North
American Electric Reliability Council
(NERC) 1200 Urgent Action Cyber
Security Standard.
Solution
Ease of use, Microsoft-based standard
platform, easy-to-build applications and
displays, outstanding data trending
capabilities, reliable IT security, and
NERC security compliance monitoring
with IT Monitor.™
Benefits
•
Creation of visual representations of
all T&D real-time and historical data
in one place
•
Increased T&D real-time power
system data visibility and
information availability to
engineering and planning,
construction and maintenance,
marketing, regulatory, load
forecasting, district offices, and
Emergency Operations Center
without accessing the real-time
control systems
•
Ease, speed, and accuracy in
reporting
•
Integrated information/collaboration
with other utility entities
•
Greatly improved system visibility to
act in emergency situations
•
Trending/analysis tools right on the
desktop
In 2003, one T&D Utility, implemented OSIsoft’s PI System™ (PI™) across all
Transmission and Distribution operations. This decision dramatically changed the
way this Utility is able to access power system data and conduct business. Now
operators, engineers, analysts, managers, and executives are able to monitor
real-time power system data using easy-to-configure displays, with the ability to
trend and analyze in real time or historical mode. PI gave this Utility an unparalleled
ability to monitor transmission line status from the Emergency Operations Center
when crises arise. Systems are now integrated and data is provided to operations,
management, planning, forecasting, and regulatory compliance groups.
Two major, complex real-time control systems monitor and control the power
system at this Utility: the transmission Energy Management System (EMS) and the
Distribution Management System (DMS). There are many applications within EMS;
however one of the main functions is Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition
(SCADA), which scans data from (or sends control to) the field devices via the
Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) through the master station equipment or Front-End
Processors. The EMS and DMS systems are primarily used for real-time
operational purposes and are not intended for long-term data storage.
TnD Utility Case Study: Revolutionizes one utility's electric transmission & distribution power system data
distributed generation data directly into PI
The PI System becomes a company
standard
Implementing EMS infrastructure security monitoring
and notification for NERC compliance
Like many companies, most employees within this
Utility had limited access to real-time information, and
data retrieval required numerous manual processes.
The company’s transmission grid operations and
distribution operations departments sought a tool that
would provide employees easy access to the T&D
real-time information they needed, enabling them to
analyze and manage data themselves. There was also
a great need for a system that would allow users to
easily retrieve data, create displays, and generate
reports.
For this, the Utility’s Energy Management Systems
Operations group discovered the OSIsoft PI System,
with its unique real-time, time-series data engine. They
realized that in addition to PI being Microsoft-based and
consistent with industry standards, most other electric
utilities were using PI already.
System Transmission Summary
A fast, streamlined installation
“No matter what conference or meeting I went to, I
always heard people from other electric utilities talking
about using PI. Apparently, OSIsoft’s Platform has
become the industry standard in the power generation
and T&D business. We work very closely with other
utility entities, and sometimes they send us some
trending snapshots for us to analyze, like a sudden
spike or a dip for certain analog data. Often times in the
past, it was difficult for us to determine what had
occurred because if the event happened and cleared
quickly, our system wasn’t able to collect or record such
a sudden change,” says the Utility’s Project Manager.
The Utility had a remarkably rapid PI System
installation, beginning in mid 2003. “It was 125 miles per
hour, non-stop,” says the Utility. “After two weeks, we
had 10,000 points from the Transmission EMS and
three substations from the Distribution DMS going into
PI, including backfilling EMS data since 1995. Four
months later, we had 40,000 points from the Distribution
DMS in PI, including backfilling DMS data since 2000.
Six months later in December, we upgraded PI from a
50,000-tag to 150,000-tag server.”
The Utility’s PI project became a joint venture between
electric transmission and electric distribution, in order to
provide access to both transmission and distribution
data from one common platform. The goal was for one
system to capture and store data from both the
transmission and the distribution systems.
Additional project goals included:
Creating synergies in data integration between the
transmission and distribution groups
Interfacing with other company T&D data sources and
applications
Enhancing and improving power system data quality
Transferring all non-SCADA data (substation automation)
directly into PI
“Because of such an easy installation process, we
implemented the PI System as fast as we could,” says
the Utility. “We immediately saw major benefits in the
Platform and wanted a full-scale implementation as
soon as possible to get the data to the end-users. There
was a real sense of urgency because the PI System
could collect all the data we needed into one single
location. That’s why we had to rush to upgrade our
server tag count and purchase more client licenses at
the end of December 2003. Within a short time, we were
able to establish a new purchase order contract with
OSIsoft, upgrade the server to 150K tags, and then we
received the invoice to complete the purchase process.
That was the fastest turnaround I’ve ever seen, after
working with many software or hardware vendors where
sometimes it can take weeks to just get a quotation.”
Transferring metering and measurement department
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TnD Utility Case Study: Revolutionizes one utility's electric transmission & distribution power system data
Immediately upon installation, the Utility saw data never
before captured, let alone displayed in configurable,
real-time applications. “Before, most people didn’t have
direct access to EMS data, so they would ask us for
data. Now, engineers have access to all the data they
need right on their desktop,” says the Utility.
With every T&D point built into the hierarchical Module
Database, users can easily select and trend multiple
points by pointing-and-clicking in the drill-down
structure. Users can also search for real-time and
historical data, and calculate max/min/average
automatically, right on their desktops.
Starting out right
The Utility’s PI team needed to address a number of
critical decisions before company-wide rollout. The first
was that each data point, known as a tag, must be
represented in OSIsoft’s Module Database™ A
consistent naming convention for the tags was designed
.and developed for standardization across all the
systems. A good tag-naming convention also made
searches within the Module Database hierarchies more
logical and straightforward.
NERC and IT Monitor
After the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11,
2001, energy companies came under far more scrutiny
over computer and cyber security. “We take NERC
compliance very seriously,” says the Utility. “From the
executive level on down, our company is very
concerned with cyber security within the real-time
control system infrastructure.” In addition, all utilities
face tremendous pressure to comply with new cyber
security standards. The NERC 1200 Urgent Action
Cyber Security Standard (NERC 1200 UAS), is a
temporary standard establishing a set of defined
security requirements for the energy industry. The
purpose of NERC 1200 UAS is to reduce risks to the
reliability of bulk electric systems from any compromise
of critical cyber assets. NERC 1200 UAS will expire in
Summer 2005, so a draft of a permanent Cyber Security
Standard (NERC 1300) was circulated for comment in
September 2004. The new NERC 1300 standard is
expected to be refined and eventually ratified to take
over when NERC 1200 expires next year.
“Since NERC requires all critical cyber assets to be
monitored seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day,
we needed a tool to perform this system-wide
monitoring,” says the Utility. “Since we had already
invested in the PI System and knew its reliable
reputation of monitoring our power system, we wanted
to build on that by adding the IT Monitor product from
OSIsoft. We thought it would be a good tool for our EMS
infrastructure.”
Today, IT Monitor keeps an eye on the Utility’s EMS
critical cyber assets across multiple platforms and
devices. “For our EMS infrastructure in the control
center, IT Monitor is watching all of our PI servers, PI
interface/OPC nodes, SQL and Web servers, EMS
application nodes, front-end processors (our master
station), dispatcher workstations, and network devices,”
says the Utility.
The second decision regarded system redundancy. The
PI System architecture is designed with an automatic
backup failover scheme and complete system
redundancy, just like this company’s EMS and DMS
systems.
The third major decision was to immediately start
implementing and utilizing IT Monitor.
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TnD Utility Case Study: Revolutionizes one utility's electric transmission & distribution power system data
“IT Monitor went well beyond our expectations. Not only
can we monitor CPU, memory, swapping space, and file
system disk space, we can also monitor every single
EMS process — real-time data distribution, automatic
generation control (AGC), real-time calculations, alarm
and events processing, and many other EMS critical
processes and activities. IT Monitor has quite a lot of
monitoring capability; whatever we need to monitor, we
probably can do it with IT Monitor. We can use IT
Monitor to cover anything that is SNMP-enabled, even
beyond the computer infrastructure, like our
uninterruptible power supplies, and facility-related items
such as air conditioners. All the equipment — all of our
asset and investment in our control center — can be
potentially supervised with IT Monitor.”
“IT Monitor is definitely a valuable, strategic investment
for our control center,” the Utility says. “It really helped
us meet the cyber security criteria in NERC 1200 and
has given our staff the ability to monitor system changes
and performance. The most valuable part was that we
could tell our executives, ‘Don’t worry. Everything is
taken care of and done right, as far as EMS cyber
security.’ ”
Real-time data is vital in the wake of
disaster
The Utility has had an Emergency Operations Center for
several years. In the wake of disaster, energy crisis, or
large-scale power outage in the area, this center is
immediately activated. At those times, all key
representatives from the company come together in the
center to monitor events, communicate and make
decisions — much like a command center.
“Before PI, people couldn’t monitor the real-time
information at the center,” says the Utility. “Trying to get
current real-time information was very challenging
during a crisis. The center had to communicate with the
operations staff in the control room by fax, by phone, or
by email to try to get the latest information. But with PI at
the center’s workstations, people can now monitor all of
our transmission and distribution systems from the
desktop. For example, last year in 2004, the distribution
operations group developed a “Load Curtailment”
application in PI to prepare for possible load-shedding
or rolling blackouts during a power crisis. This has really
helped the emergency center personnel because they
don’t have to communicate with the distribution
operations switching center to get real-time information
and periodic updates. Now the operator or dispatcher in
the control center or switching center can concentrate
on operations and dealing with the crisis at hand.”
The Utility also uses the Web browser-based, view-only
ActiveView™ client application. Every single
ProcessBook™ display can be viewed via the Web
browser.
With the Utility’s electric grid diagram linked to the PI
data, users can go back to any historical event to review
the impact and sequence of events on the transmission
grid, step-by-step with scroll back /forward capability,
such as depicted here for one particular crisis.
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TnD Utility Case Study: Revolutionizes one utility's electric transmission & distribution power system data
An entire company realizes the
potential of the PI System
System transmission summary
Monthly trending display
Intertie MW flow
In early 2004, the Utility’s PI team decided to take PI on
the road. As part of the companywide rollout, the EMS
group invited all employees (except the
Trading/Merchant business) to a presentation/demo of
the plan, and a briefing on the benefits and capabilities
of the Platform. In addition, many local on-site demos,
training and installations were conducted at different
parts of the Company. The team collected ideas and
requests and created many PI System applications,
displays, and reports to help people perform their jobs
better. Also, many other databases, spreadsheets, and
devices were linked to the PI System for a single T&D
point database source. This was accomplished easily
because OSIsoft’s PI System has more than 400
interfaces already built to connect to hardware devices
or software applications.
Digital point tracking analysis
These “road shows” generated great interest throughout
” the company. The more PI was demonstrated, the
clearer it became that the PI System wasn’t just for
transmission and distribution anymore. “Departments
from marketing to regulatory to strategic planning, and
even people from the customer service call centers
participated and were interested in finding out how they
could use the PI System in their area,” says the Utility.
Load comparisons trending
“PI monitors the entire grid automatically behind the
scenes,” says the Utility. “It’s like the eyes and ears of
the operation. I don’t like to hear people call OSIsoft’s PI
System a ‘historian’. To us, it’s a company-wide
real-time monitoring system and a historical data
system. The alarming and notification system can even
send an early warning before the problem occurs. Now,
we implement it so that every single point and every
single device is monitored by PI.”
Capacitor control overview
Substation /point search trending
Transmission voltage profile
Open circuit breakers
Total load summary
Special protection schemes
Load forecast vs. actual
RTU and communication channels status
Yearly total load
Real-time Distribution operations management
displays:
Comm line status
Substation point search trending
12KV bus voltage
Circuit watchlist
Open circuit breaker
SCADA battery analysis
Open field device switch
SCADA breaker analysis
Load curtailment
SCADA sectionalizers
The Utility now uses OSIsoft’s PI System to gather and
archive over 10,000 points of real-time Transmission
EMS and over 40,000 Distribution SCADA data points.
This power system information is now available
throughout the company on user desktops. For
example, an engineer or manager may wish to see the
record for peak electricity use, or need to see real-time
and historical trends at a substation to use in
determining the timing of system outages, or for other
purposes. Below are a few examples of PI displays that
have been built for the Utility by its own people.
Real-time Transmission operations management
displays:
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TnD Utility Case Study: Revolutionizes one utility's electric transmission & distribution power system data
Users can compare the T&D loading between today’s
load and two other user-selectable dates. The
hierarchical display of point structure enables users to
quickly and easily check individual point performance.
Real-time Emergency Operations Center management
displays:
Tielines and breaker status
Transmission summary
System graphical display
Load forecast vs. actual
Daily system load comparison
ISO system summary
Substations displays:
Combined T&D real-time substation one-line system
operations diagrams
Playing a part in a states grid
management
Like many parts of the country, the Independent
Systems Operator (ISO) manages the entire grid for the
Utility’s territory. In order to manage the grid accurately
and in real time, it is essential that the ISO, other utility
entities and the Utility collaborate and exchange data.
This was very difficult before the Utility installed the PI
System to gather, store, visualize, and distribute
real-time and historical data. Now that the other entity
and the Utility use the PI System, both companies are
able to share the trending results and other data
analysis information in the same format. Use of the
same PI tools has also provided an improvement in
ensuring data quality and the ability to spot
discrepancies for troubleshooting purposes between
the two EMS systems.
A color-coded open and closed breaker status display
provides an at-a-glance overview of the Utility’s 69 KV
tie lines. Users have the ability to scroll backward and
forward by a user-selectable time period.
The lights are on
Reliability and customer service are among the main
goals of power utilities.PI helps this case study
customer better monitor the electric power system; the
PI System has become an integral part of the Utility’s
T&D business strategy because PI integrates
transmission and distribution into one place. The
engineers, operators, and managers are now closer to
both Transmission and Distribution real-time data,
which helps them make decisions in improving the
reliability of the T&D system.
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TnD Utility Case Study: Revolutionizes one utility's electric transmission & distribution power system data
“If we didn’t have PI, we would probably be doing
business like in the old days. We’d have data sources
separated and spread out among different locations.
There’d be no common platform for integration, so
people would have limited access to certain pieces of
information. We would have to rely on phones, fax, or
emails in order to request data. It would require some
manual process or programming to retrieve the data,
and then we would have to put it in a user-requested
specific format. Without PI, it is a lot of work and very
inefficient to manage the data. We can’t imagine
working in that slow fashion again,” says the Utility.
The Utility’s total load for an entire year can be
visualized quickly in one trend for better analysis,
planning, and forecasting. Even though the Utility
started using PI in mid 2003, using backfilled data, the
users can still view the total area load from the entire
year of 1996 forward to the present.
Many departments are now supported by the PI
System. Besides transmission and distribution
operations, construction, maintenance, planning and
engineering departments, upper management,
marketing, regulatory, environmental chemical lab, and
metering, among others, are seeing benefits provided
by PI. “Now, not only are the lights still on in our territory,
but we’re seeing our operations more clearly in the
future. Dr. Pat Kennedy (OSIsoft founder and CEO),
you should be very proud of your company — you have
provided a great tool for our businesses,” says the
Utility.
The EMS group has also targeted another project. “We
installed a projection screen to display critical system
data on the wall in our workspace. This way, we are able
to project IT Monitor and ProcessBook™ displays for
the EMS support staff. We want everyone to see the ‘big
picture’ of the EMS infrastructure and electric power grid
that our PI System provides!”
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