Standards Compliance for Many Systems Components Important Internationally while Surprisingly High Level of Interest in NERC CIP Compliance Reported From Outside of North America
February 12, 2013. Ellicott City, Maryland. The Newton-Evans Research Company has released its 2013 edition of a four volume study of EMS, SCADA, DMS and OMS usage patterns in the world’s electric power utilities. This release marks the tenth such research program in this series completed since 1984.
Newton-Evans staff conducted surveys and interviews with more than 150 utilities in 37 countries. These included many of the TOP 100 utilities in the world. Among the observations gleaned from interviews and surveys with these utilities, along with views from control systems integrators and power delivery consultants are these:
Rationale for Increased Spending on Control Systems: A number of factors were cited by participants as the basis to support the increased levels of systems augmentation, upgrades and replacements over the next 36 months including the need for new applications to improve operator visualization and situational awareness; adding redundancy to communications pathing; improving cyber defenses; complying with new regulatory mandates; and in some instances, a desire to combine two or more systems onto common platforms.
Differences in International and North American perspectives and approaches to Standards for control systems: The role of international standards is more important to utilities outside of North America than to domestic utilities. While IEC standards compliance dominates systems procurements and communications approaches internationally, in North America the roles of IEEE, ANSI, NEMA and de facto standards play a much more important role. Forty percent of international respondents indicated having a requirement for OPC (Open Platform Communications) compared with only 27% of North American replies. Similarly SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) was viewed as being much more important internationally than was reported by North American respondents. Two-thirds of international utilities and 19% of North American utilities reported interest in using CIM standards for model maintenance related to distribution circuit design transfers from GIS (Geographical Information Systems) to DMS.
Similar Levels of Concern with Cyber Security: Eighty percent of North American utility officials and 82% of international utilities cited a need for cyber security features to be designed as an integral part of their control systems, not provided as an “add-on.” Interestingly, many international utilities are modeling their cyber security mandates for power delivery control systems on North America’s NERC CIPs. Across the world, several utilities also called for control systems integrators to do more to make NERC (and other) compliance and regulatory reporting easier and more automated.
Third Party Control Center Services: Consulting services are being used and more likely to be relied upon to assist with expanding NERC CIP compliance issues, for the conduct of vulnerability assessments and for consulting on smart grid topics. In addition, several comments were directed toward the increased reliance on third party services to assist utilities as they cope with workforce retirements in their operational control centers.
Role of Operational Analytics: Noticeable differences in current and planned usage of operational analytics were found for asset analytics, DMS analytics (load and voltage balancing et al) and customer analytics. Each of these are now being used (or soon will be) more widely internationally than in North American utilities. OMS analytics (e.g., fault location) are of similar levels of usage and plans among both groups.
The four volume study includes separate reports on (1) North America with details by type of utility, (2) International community with detailed findings by world region; (3) Profiles of leading systems integrators and (4) World regional market outlook for each type of power delivery control systems through 2015. The complete set of reports is available for $7,500.00, and individual reports are also available for online ordering.
Further information on this new series entitled The World Market Study of SCADA, Energy Management Systems, Distribution Management Systems and Outage Management Systems in Electric Utilities: 2013-2015 is available from Newton-Evans Research Company, 10176 Baltimore National Pike, Suite 204, Ellicott City, Maryland 21042. Phone: 410-465-7316 or visit us at www.newton-evans.com to order this series or any of more than 100 related reports. Chuck Newton can be reached at cnewton@newton-evans.com.
summary reviews and highlights from completed studies
