Getting smarter

With energy efficiency becoming an increasingly important consideration, US Infrastructure asks a panel of experts to discuss the challenges behind a sustainable smart grid.

As wireless communication becomes a standard feature in smart meters, what challenges exist around maintaining security levels?

Malcolm Unsworth. Wireless communications for smart metering present new challenges for utilities, especially in managing access to the meters and how the technology can be exploited. In the past, most meters were not ‘connected’ to the utility – there was no two-way communication. Access to these meters had to be accomplished locally, and only the meter being attacked could be compromised, relegating the impact to a single premise or area.

Without secure technical controls and design principles in the system architecture, wireless two-way communications mean a local attack at a meter or to the communications infrastructure could be exploited to potentially affect many meters or communication devices from a single point. Because this single point of access can have far greater impact, a higher level of authentication and authorization should be required to locally access the smart meter.

J. Patrick Kennedy. Wireless has significant security issues but the cost is so much less than wired that for most signals we should expect to have to deal with these issues. The potential for benefits is also very high as the cost of new data is reduced. Many of the groups that specialize in wireless communication are working on this issue.

Jack Danahy. Wireless communications come in many different forms, and security approaches are dependent upon both the technology and implementation model selected. Cellular networks, Bluetooth connections, IP wireless, and even traditional radio networks have all been considered for roles in the smart grid and have differing capabilities, but the main concerns can be captured uniformly. In a smart grid, decisions and charges are driven by the data collected, which necessitates application of all of the traditional security characteristics. In a wireless network, where the receiving system cannot rely on a permanent, hardwired connection to ensure the identity of the sender, strong authentication of the sources must be created and managed. Similarly, because the network is formed through the air, and not over a fixed wire, confidentiality must be ensured through encryption and decryption of data at the meter and at the aggregation point.

Achieving better energy efficiency is a major priority at the moment, both for providers and their customers. What role does the smart grid have to play in this effort?

JPK. The smart grid provides a mechanism for users to become more involved addressing their own energy efficiency, conservation and assist in meeting demand response requirements. The smart grid provides means of letting these users know what is required and paying them for a rapid response. These data were the missing element to monetization of better operation and control.  Like many control issues, wide scope, high resolution data with reduced latency disseminated to all that need it are important to the continuous improvement process that is used for conservation.
 
For the utilities, metering technology will improve the meter to cash process. It will increase accuracy resulting in less estimated bills and reduce bill complaints with better detection of fraud. Planned for the future are enterprise functions such as better asset management, load profile and forecasting, and demand response including load shaping. This will require a unifying layer for meter data collection unencumbered by proprietary applications at the metering level giving rise to the MDUS versus the older MDMS approach.

JD. The smart grid is made smart through the use of analytics and an increasingly rich set of data around behavior on the grid. From a user’s perspective, it has been shown that simply exposing a consumer to their usage pattern creates an average of 15 percent saving in energy use. This is largely accomplished by time shifting power consumption and selecting more efficient appliances and practices. The smart grid simplifies and unifies the provision of that type of data. Similarly, increased data and analytics drive more intelligent and predictive operations of the grid. As a result, outages, downtime and the need to tap additional power sources can be reduced due to the development of a proactive capability in managing the internals of the grid.

MU. Actually, how a utility applies smart metering and smart grid technology can play a central role in meeting environmental mandates. These technologies support a clean energy economy by aiding in carbon reduction – for example, given the number of smart meters Itron can produce annually, with conservative demand response assumptions, over one million tons of carbon emissions could be avoided. And this is before we factor in things like reduced emissions from fewer truck rolls.

In fact, the Natural Resources Defense Council has gone as far as saying that smart meters are essential to saving the planet. These technologies also enable a renewable power infrastructure and encourage system efficiency and consumer involvement.

Though smart meters are currently focused on electricity supply, are there other applications they could be applied to, such as tackling sustainability issues in water and gas utilities?

JD. There are existing smart grids already in operation for these other types of infrastructure systems. The electrical grid is the most challenging implementation, given the ‘just in time’ nature of power generation and delivery. A new grid, fully instrumented, must allow for the constant monitoring and management of a variety of components, by technicians fully cognizant of much larger potential impacts of failure. As an example, in traditional IT, many security failures result in denial of access to resources. In a utility, that denial would be catastrophic. As a result, lessons learned in smart grid initiatives in electricity clearly help to inform and advance other infrastructure initiatives.

MU. So many of our competitors are focused only on the electric side of the smart grid. Itron is moving beyond just electricity for smart distribution systems. For gas, we’re tailoring our advanced metering solution so that utilities can use the two-way communication of our fixed network technology to gather gas recorder and corrector serial data, and monitor cathodic protection. This is as opposed to reading the instruments manually or relying on expensive cellular technology. Accessing these readings through our gas AMI network will result in reduced operational costs for utilities.
 
And for water, we’re making tremendous headway in making usage information that has typically been static, into dynamic actionable data. As these solutions become increasingly sophisticated, different players will need to work together to create integrated systems. This will require a new view of, and a new competence in, collaboration.

JPK. Users also want sustainability that requires lower consumption of all resources. Even though water and gas are not consumed as they are produced, as with electrical power, there is a nexus between all of these and they should share the same continuous improvement process.  In their presentation on sustainability, Kodak showed that intelligent metering and submetering of power, water and process allowed them to save one billion gallons of water in the last three years as well as saving over $100MM thus conservation can be a major force. Their industry standard continuous improvement process leveraged this wider scope of data (including the real-time price of power and its history from their provider) for these benefits. It is not possible to say which is the more important type of metering. The emphasis should be on the continuous improvement process, which requires the unification of metering, utility, process data and analytics.

What are the key innovations and improvements need to be realized before the smart grid can achieve its true potential? How far off do you think these advances are likely to be?

MU. Fostering the grid is not only one of our industry's largest opportunities; it's also one of the most complex. We need to move quickly and decisively with the best ideas and the right smart technologies.

For the smart grid to mature, we need an honest discussion, stripped of the hype. We can't let a single company's interests get in the way of realizing the smart grid. We need open standards that allow for seamless interoperability between hardware, software and other systems in the grid. And they all must entice future innovation. Utilities and regulators need to demand standards that allow for this integration and for evolution.

Building the smart grid may take a lifetime. But aspects of it are here today and are developing rapidly. To be successful, we need an infrastructure that is designed to evolve.

JPK. The smart grid requires extreme scalability for both the event management and total number of real-time data streams. As the cost of metering technology and communication are lowered utilizing the continued spread of broadband networks and advances in wireless security the amount of resources conserved will increase. Communication to the end user via portals and smart phones utilizing social networking will allow the consumer to take action from smart devices. The industrial user has greater potential; they have the control technology in place, people to utilize those resources and the economic justification to adjust their process for monetary rewards. Alcoa presented their project to accomplish this recently and reported a four month payout of a $700,000 project by supplying energy back to the grid in peak demand periods while controlling their manufacturing processes.

JD. While some may point to technology-based improvements such as utility-scale storage solutions as the keys, the most critical advancement will be in the leadership of the various providers to the smart grid food chain. Recognizing the unique challenges of reliability, responsiveness and security, as being co-equal in the new grid will force a different mindset on the part of utility providers, regulators and product vendors. Technically, there are dozens of challenges, but none of them are notably more difficult than a myriad that have been tackled and tamed during the internet revolution. As with so many new advancements, the greatest challenge will be motivating the players to progress, in the face of risk, beyond the status quo.

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Biographies

A highly-respected executive both domestically and internationally, with broad experience throughout the utility industry, Malcolm Unsworth was named Chief Executive Officer and President of Itron in March 2009. Prior to his post as CEO, he was Itron’s President and Chief Operating Officer. He was elected to its board of directors in December 2008.

Dr. J. Patrick Kennedy is CEO and founder of OSIsoft., LLC. Prior Kennedy worked as an engineer for Shell Development Company and Taylor Instrument Company. Kennedy attended the University of Kansas where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering.

Jack Danahy is a Security Executive at IBM. He holds five patents and has additional patents pending in secure distributed computing, kernel security, software vulnerability analysis, and secure systems management. He currently authors two blogs: Suitable Security at http://suitablesecurity.blogspot.com and Smart Grid Security at http://smartgridsecurity.blogspot.com/.