How SGIP is Accelerating Grid Modernization

NEMA (National Electrical Manufacturers Association) published an interesting article entitled “Grid Resilience – Come Hell or High Water” in the Sept. 2016 issue of the organization’s Electroindustry magazine.  The article was written by Sharon Allen, President and CEO of the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP), which strives to work with electric utilities and other industry players to accelerate grid modernization.  The article details these initiatives.

One of the ways in which SGIP is trying to accelerate grid modernization is by developing an open source information architecture / framework that enables interconnectivity between IoT technologies – for example, utilizing field devices that ‘talk to’ a centralized outage management system (OMS) in real time.  One of the project’s initial IoT interconnectivity efforts focuses on the integration of microgrids with the utility grid, enabling them to seamlessly come online and offline based on power loss at specific feeder locations.

Another SGIP initiative involves working with investor-owned utilities to develop system changes that are soon-to-be needed due to the increasing proliferation of distributed energy resources (DER).  Still another project is the “Orange Button” initiative, which is part of the DOE’s SunShot initiative and seeks to standardize solar data so that industry stakeholders can better gather, manage and analyze information and intelligence.

I, for one, applaud these efforts because they aim to reduce emergency restoration times (ETRs), which mirrors the general mission of emergency preparedness.  Thanks to SGIP and organizations like it, every year we’re getting closer to working smarter in this regard.