Getting smart with energy management

Emissions from electricity production are one of the major contributors for global warming, being responsible for up to 40% of the carbon footprint in some developed countries. The demand for electrical energy will continue to grow and the question really becomes, what do we need to do to meet this demand without increasing the carbon footprint?

In this context, energy management is changing significantly in Australia and throughout the world. The smart grid concept came from the urgent need to enhance the current electric grid to use the energy we generate today in a smarter, more efficient way. In order to transform this concept in reality, two things are necessary: an automated metering infrastructure, allowing customers to have more control over their consumption, and an automated, modern and reliable transmission and distribution network, allowing utilities to operate with greater efficiency.

In order to improve reliability in transmission and distribution networks, a high level of automation is necessary in the electrical substations. This high level of automation is achieved using a wide range of electronic equipment, such as protection relays, programmable logic controllers and power meters. However, to make this wide range of devices work together and in coordination can be a real challenge.

Many attempts have been made over the years to address this challenge, but according to Daniel Brandao, Energy Management - Offer Manager, Schneider Electric, only recently we seem to have found a solution: the IEC61850 standard. “The main advantage of this standard is that it is vendor independent, which helps to address real needs from users and not only commercial interests from the manufacturers,” says Brandao. Apart from being vendor independent, the standard also provides a common dictionary of terms for all electronic devices that can be found inside of the substation, and it’s futureproof, as it doesn't rely on underlying protocols.

Based in Canada, Brandao recently visited Sydney, where he presented a paper on energy management at the MMI Conference for metering professionals. His paper focused on power quality enhancements for IEC 61850. Brandao explains that the IEC 61850 protocol started out with a focus on high-voltage transmission substations but it’s now migrating to other areas of the power system, such as distribution substations, wind and hydro generation. Large-sized, energy-intensive businesses, from industry sectors such as manufacturing, oil and gas, and mining, are also interested in the standard and power quality is increasingly important with the uptake of these types of applications on the grid.

“Power quality is basically any problem manifested in the supplied power that can prevent electrical equipment from working properly, such as voltage drops, frequency deviations, harmonics and transients,” Brandao says. “It is deeply related to energy efficiency, since an appropriated level of the power quality improves the reliability and increases the availability of electrical networks.”

Power quality problems can be caused by loads (electronic equipment that distorts the waveform, unbalanced loads), environmental conditions (lightning, storms) or by the operation of substation equipment (switching, transformer tap changing). Utilities need to make sure consumers are not ‘polluting’ the network with their loads, and consumers want to make sure they are buying energy with good quality.

“If we have power quality issues on the network, the life of the important electric equipment, such as power transformers, can be shortened,” says Brandao. “Electric equipment must work within certain limits to ensure the total life span is achieved. Equipment working with adequate power is more energy efficient and requires less maintenance.”

Since IEC 61850 is so important in the smart grid concept, Schneider Electric is adopting the standard in its metering equipment and is also proposing additions to enhance the standard, specifically to address power quality-related aspects.

According to Brandao, Schneider Electric is calling for the power quality standards to be mapped into the IEC 61850. “It’s something new for metering devices,” he says. “We are aware that utilities are using the protocol very successfully for protection and automation devices but we want to include metering and power quality devices inside this whole concept.”

There are already important standards related to power quality (PQ), such as IEC 61000-4-30 (how meters should calculate PQ-related parameters) and EN50160 (defines a set of limits to PQ-related phenomena). Schneider Electric is proposing the adoption of these standards on the IEC 61850 (vendor neutrality, application relevance and global market presence) as well as some other additions, such as new logical nodes and improved time synchronisation.

“We believe the importance of power quality in the smart grid is being underestimated, and we want to influence the standards to bring real value to the users. After all, a reliable network is key to the successful implementation of the smart grid and therefore key to a sustainable use of electricity.”