The USA’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released the third version of its Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability Standards – a document intended to guide the 194 members of its Smart Grid Interoperability Panel along the path of securely upgrading the US national grid.
Version 3 of the document appears 4 years after the first, and clocks in at a lengthy 246 pages. The new inclusions to the standard aim to “update the plan for transforming the nation’s aging electric power system into an interoperable smart grid – a network that will integrate information and communication technologies with the power-delivery infrastructure, enabling two-way flows of both energy and data.”
The main additions to the program, mandated by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, address smart meters, standards and protocols, updated reference architectures, and updates to smart grid cybersecurity.
NIST writes “since the release of the last edition in February 2012, significant technological advances in smart grid infrastructure have been implemented, supported by standards development across the entire smart grid arena. Examples include widespread deployment of wireless-communication power meters, availability of customer usage data through the Green Button initiative, remote sensing for determining real-time retransmission and distribution status, and protocols for electric vehicle charging.”
Consequently, NIST is asserting this framework to ensure that as new technologies are integrated into the grid they don’t cause future problems and incompatibilities with existing systems. While the smart grid can bring about improved efficiencies, it is also intended to be more resilient than the older infrastructure – improving its chances of surviving outages that could be caused by “terrorist attacks, electromagnetic interference, geomagnetic storms, high-altitude nuclear detonations, and severe weather.”
These are important additions to a national grid that must move 4,000 terawatt-hours (TWh) of energy each year, or around 11,000 gigawatt-hours (GWh) each day. It must be noted that 67% of this total energy is generated by fossil fuels, 19% by nuclear, 7% by hydroelectric and only 6% from other renewables – including 4% wind, 1.48% biomass, 0.4% from geothermal and lastly 0.23% solar.
The main benefits of the fossil fuels is that they can be used to generate demand at a constant and entirely predictable rate, which allows engineers in the power plants to burn fuel to meet demand almost exactly. The opposite is true for most renewables, in that their output fluctuates depending on the environment.
This means that as the smart grid emerges, so too must energy storage systems – to hold onto any surplus energy generated by renewable sources so that it can be released when the renewables are producing less than required. For renewable sources, only hydroelectric can be used to meet a sudden increase in demand, which is why it is currently a popular source to keep in a reserve function, utilizing its spare capacity to make up for outages or sudden unanticipated shortfalls.
So with this framework, NIST is trying to preemptively solve any future issues that might arise from a smart grid industry that operates without sufficient regulation and standard compliance. So here are the details:
The first of the main 4 areas that the 3.0 framework address is the “wide deployment of smart electric meters as well as devices called phasor measurement units, a.k.a synchophasors.” The latter devices let engineers monitor the movement of electricity across the grid to allow them to monitor the flow and address any issues in grid stability or efficiency. The new framework addresses these deployments, by assigning standards to their usage.
Version 3.0 has also added seven new standards and protocols to its list of standards that improve smart grid interoperability, which now numbers 74 in total (Table 4-1). New additions also include developments and publications regarding cybersecurity, in particular the role of security in protecting the smart grid and other critical US infrastructure. A separate 3-volume revision of Guidelines for Smart Grid Cybersecurity has also been published, called NISTIR 7628 Revision 1. This manuscript adds new sections discussing cybersecurity, cyber-physical attacks, testing and certification and regulatory changes involving customer privacy.
Updates to the reference smart grid architecture model have also been made in the new framework. The model is intended to demonstrate to utilities and municipalities how the elements of the smart grid connect and communicate, and “has now been harmonized with a similar model being developed by the European community.” The update is intended to address the increasing presence of distributed energy resources, i.e. non-utility owned supplies, such as consumer-owned wind and solar.
In addition to the updates to the reference architecture, NIST includes an updated Interoperability Process Reference Manual that is intended to aid the testing and certification “that is taking on increased urgency as industry reaches consensus on the underlying standards for the smart grid,” with an extended discussion of the subject in the framework.