Generating Insights | Accelerating into a new era in energy

• Customer-Focused Systems Engineering: Creates a structured framework in order to balance cost, schedule, and technical constraints of smart grid deployment.
• Open Innovation: Allows for the sharing of ideas and concepts across utilities, policy makers, vendors, and research groups to advance technology development and applied research.
• Technology Development Scenario Planning: Ensures that SCE’s smart grid vision and strategy remain viable as driving forces alter the smart grid landscape.
• Proactive Standards Development: Enables the adoption of standards that encourage interoperability of multiple generations of smart grid technologies.
• Rigorous Technology Evaluation: Repeatable and thorough approach for testing, evaluating, and deploying emerging smart grid technologies.

In addition to adhering to the five core methodologies listed above, SCE’s smart grid strategy has also resulted in the formation of a new organization dedicated to ensuring a coordinated approach to smart grid development and deployment. The new SCE Advanced Technology organization is responsible for technology development and evaluation activities, standards development, and technology-related strategy and policy for each of the smart grid theme areas depicted in the SCE smart grid vision. In addition to the Advanced Technology organization itself, a formal executive governance committee—the Smart Grid Integration Council—has been formed to focus on increasing communication and coordination between and within SCE business units to ensure that the utility’s smart grid strategic direction is consistent with Edison’s overall corporate strategy and business objectives.

Smart grid roadmap

The smart grid development journey will likely take more than twenty years to fully accomplish, with many key milestones along the way. Because of this, the SCE smart grid roadmap was developed depicting four distinct stages of evolution that increase system capabilities and complexity over time. This evolution will not follow a strictly linear path, but instead rest on four overlapping steps, as depicted in Figure 3, which will transition from one to the next as innovations in smart grid technologies emerge and become commercially available. Over time, the expanding richness of smart grid functionality, coupled with the increasing reach of the smart grid throughout the electric system and to greater numbers of customers, will drive a migration from an instrumented to interconnected to intelligent grid system.

Figure 3 – SCE Smart Grid Roadmap - Stages of Evolution to 2030

The different stages of the SCE smart grid roadmap are characterized as follows:

• Stage 1: Foundation. This refers to foundational efforts that were completed from the mid-1990s through 2008. SCE’s smart grid accomplishments over this period included pioneering efforts in Synchronized Phasor Measurement Systems, industry leadership in substation and distribution system automation, and the rollout of smart metering to large commercial and industrial (C&I) customers.
• Stage 2: Inform & Automate. SCE is currently executing Stage 2, which involves deployment of advanced measurement and automation systems through 2012. In addition to completing the Edison SmartConnect advanced metering program, this stage also includes broad deployment of phasor measurement units, significant improvements in grid operations and control systems, and expansion of advanced protection systems. SCE is also planning capital upgrades to accommodate the mass-market introduction of PEV in its service area.
• Stage 3: Interactive. Stage 3 will result in automation of the energy delivery system across the entire value chain, including the customer. It will consist of both “hard grid” assets that incorporate new physical materials such as advanced energy storage and super-conducting equipment, and “soft grid” assets such as next-generation computing and analytics systems that will unlock the full value of the smart grid for both the utility and its customers.
• Stage 4: Intuitive and Transactive Grid. Stage 4 of the smart grid development roadmap assumes full convergence of information and energy systems. Results will include wider deployments of distributed computing technologies for faster system response times, the integration of many more sensory and control nodes at the distribution and customer levels, and the ability of systems to manage and intuitively react to supply and demand imbalances at the micro level or, through aggregation, at any level or nodal point across the Transmission and Distribution (T&D) grid.

Within each of these roadmap stages, there are two portfolios of activities to be managed simultaneously. The smart grid deployment project portfolio includes smart grid technologies that are commercially ready for deployment. The technology evaluation portfolio includes initiatives to identify, evaluate, and test emerging technologies that may be deployed during a later stage. Figure 4 illustrates the distinction between these two portfolios. As successful technologies evolve and mature over time, they will move up the curve and migrate from the technology evaluation portfolio to the smart grid deployment portfolio.

Figure 4 - Smart Grid Project Portfolios as a Function of Maturity

Managing the smart grid strategy and roadmap for success

Because of the staged and staggered deployment approach described above, the SCE smart grid strategy and roadmap will need to be flexible, particularly in the later years, and able to handle adjustments and changes to the scope and sequencing of deployments. Re-evaluating and reconsidering roadmap components will be an important periodic activity as detailed business cases are developed for specific smart grid initiatives, as lessons are learned through technology deployment experience, and as policy drivers and business objectives change and evolve. SCE believes that by having a well-defined smart grid strategy and roadmap today, and by making concerted efforts to keep it current over time, it is well positioned to succeed in gradually achieving its smart grid vision.

About the Authors:

Paul De Martini is vice president of Advanced Technology in the Transmission & Distribution Business Unit of Southern California Edison (SCE). Advanced Technology is SCE's R&D organization responsible for smart grid development, which includes advanced grid technologies, electric transportation, smart metering, and integration of energy-smart consumer products.

Bryan Lambird is a senior project manager within the Advanced Technology organization at Southern California Edison (SCE). He is responsible for the coordination of planning and strategy efforts pertaining to smart grid initiatives at SCE.