Generating Insights | Accelerating into a new era in energy

By Nigel Broomhall, IBM and Simon Clark, Arc Innovations

The vision of the smart grid future has fueled the imaginations of the creative and the cautious alike. Visions of the potential for smart grids in the future, while a good news story, unfortunately does not sell newspapers; conversely, negative stories that fuel conspiracy thinking are much more popular. As the smart grid moves from a theoretical concept to real-world deployment, what are now needed are positive examples of how smart grids can revolutionize human lives.

On September 4, 2010, Christchurch — New Zealand’s second-largest city — was rocked by a large earthquake. This was followed by thousands of aftershocks. Hundreds of these are listed by geologists as “significant.”

 At 12:51pm on Feburary 22, 2011, a devastating earthquake aftershock struck the city. It was strong (6.3 magnitude), shallow (5km) and close (10km). Nearly 200 people lost their lives, major infrastructure and buildings were damaged, and power was lost to most of the city. However, within one week electricity was stably restored to almost the entire city. 

 Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) systems implemented by the leading smart-meter company in New Zealand, Christchurch-based Arc Innovations, played a critical role in the stable restoration of the city’s power. This role provides a powerful example of how real-world AMI deployments are making a positive difference. IBM and Arc Innovations are now working together to perform a deep-dive analysis of the data that came from their AMI network before, during and after the disaster. This data will provide insight about how to develop smarter cities that can respond more quickly should they be struck by man-made or natural disasters.

 Following the September ‘10 and February ‘11 earthquakes, Arc has used “smart metering” information to assist the local lines companies and fire service, by offering several key services:

1. Data Analytics & Reporting

a. Identify outages faster — Pinpoints outages and nested outage locations and also permits utilities to ensure outage resolution down to street level.

b. Size outages more accurately — Utilities are able to dispatch skilled crews in appropriate numbers.

c. Provide updates on outage locations and expected duration — Assists call centers to inform customers about the timing of service restoration.

d. Permit customer outreach — Reporting on “high users” in fragile network areas, e.g., golf course irrigation systems

e. Analyze consumption — Aid in risk assessment of earthquake-affected areas by the fire service to determine likely occupancy at Installation Control Points (ICP) locations.

2. Hot water cylinder (HWC)

a. Remote reconnection — Turning on of consumers’ hot water cylinders via the AMI network in cases where backup generators being used as ripple signals cannot reach customers.

3. Extended services

a. Manage supply during a significant earthquake event or sizable outages for other reasons over the winter months.

This paper outlines the value that AMI added to the restoration of Christchurch, New Zealand, and offers some insights about potential future AMI products.

Arc’s AMI Deployment and Technology

 Arc Innovations' AMI systems are installed in approximately 120,000 Christchurch homes. Most meters transmit data to Arc's back office through a radio frequency mesh network, with some 15,000 GPRS connections communicating via the local telecom services provide. The company also has over 300 satellite connections that enable them to service all types of terrain.

Meter Data Management System (MDMS)

Arc’s MDMS performs long-term storage and management of the vast quantities of data delivered by its AMI systems using an open standards implementation that ensures that the company’s leading solutions have the type of flexible and agile approach made possible only through a Services Oriented Architecture (SOA).

Arc’s MDMS solution is based on

• a core suite of modules that provides a fully functional foundation for extensive future optional customization, e.g.,
• System Management
• Work Order Management
• Data Processing Service
• Calculation Engine

Security;

• Inclusion of an integrated Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), Meter Data Repository (MDMR) and Network Management System (NMS); and
• An extensible suite of companion modules that can extend core system functionality and

Arc’s solution imports the data, and then validates, cleanses and processes it before making it available for billing and analysis.

 Distributed Intelligence

Distributed Intelligence — Separating the processing in a large system into multiple subsystems or extracting certain processing functions from the main system and placing them into separate machines.

Arc’s AMI has distributed intelligence and rich features at the point of service delivery (e.g., the smart meter). This embedded intelligence exposes the services required from the meter and, more importantly, is an enabler for future services that have some real-time requirement that could not be met without this embedded intelligence.

Integrated Ripple Receiver

The local lines company owns and operates a ripple injection system for several purposes:

Managing peak load;

Lowering load following faults or failures, and facilitating planned maintenance;

Switching on hot water cylinders and night-store heating loads during cheaper nighttime periods;

Signalling higher-priced congestion periods;

Switching dual rate (i.e., day/night) meter registers;

Switching street lighting on and off; and

Switching load in response to retailers’ requests (from time to time).

All residential and commercial hot water cylinders of 100–500 litres of storage capacity with heating elements >1.2kW must be ripple-controlled; as such, Arc meters are fitted with an “internal” ripple-control relay able to be controlled by the lines company, via a ripple-control signal, to provide peak control, fixed-time control or emergency control of hot water cylinders. In addition, the internal ripple can be communicated with remotely via the network.

How Arc Innovations Responded

1. Hot Water Heater Services via RF network

Post-earthquake, the local distribution company’s immediate requirement was to restore power safely and quickly to as many people as possible.

The local distribution company chose to use diesel generators, injecting energy locally, in an attempt to restore power rapidly. Diesel generators supplied power to nearly 5,000 customers. There was, however, a major challenge: when the power was lost, the ripple switches in 40% of the homes were switched to “off.” The locally injecting diesel generators caused the lines company to lose the ability to use ripple-control signals to remotely turn on hot water cylinders in the affected areas. Therefore, although power was restored, people had no hot water.

Traditionally, in such an event, the only way to turn on the cylinders would be for the lines company to visit each home and manually switch on the hot water control circuit. For 2,400 customers, this would take nearly three weeks.

This is where smart metering comes in. Arc Innovations’ smart meters have a remote-control function that provides the ability to switch loads, reprogram ripple receivers, and change meter profiles remotely. Arc identified the 2,400 customers who would potentially not have had hot water and, via its data warehouse, was able to determine that 800 of these had their water heaters in the “off” position. This information was sent to the customers’ retail electricity supplier, which turned on the hot water remotely. This was undertaken over a 12-hour period so as not to overload the generators and cause peaks in demand.

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