Intelligent Utility Jan-Feb 2013

“
and in areas that will simply be beneficial to the future. While you may not tackle
all those areas at once, knowing the desired future state can help you lay a bit of
groundwork while working on the necessary interconnections.
“Get immersed in what’s in your system,” he said. “It’s a daily process.”
In fact, that immersive process of mapping and creating interoperability may
help you develop multiple purposes for equipment and analysis that you hadn’t
thought of beforehand, Kirkeby noted. Although utilities traditionally operate
in silos, isolated by area and specialty, one of the key benefits from having
numerous people across multiple disciplines involved in this immersion process
is that people gain visibility and understanding of the bigger picture. The result:
Kirkeby believes interoperability work and a smart grid road map can actually
help shake up that old-school vertical structure, a
necessary shake-up for a holistic smart grid.
If you encumber
“Just because we’ve always done things a certain
way doesn’t mean it should continue that way,”
yourself up front, you
Kirkeby concluded, revealing a final bit of advice
for making interoperability work and the smart
create a system based
grid evolve a little faster.
To make that evolution a bit smoother, Kirkeby
on what you currently
and Avista advise others to keep the customer in
the loop: keep communications open with noti-
have, instead of what
fications that have real value to consumers and
allow them to proactively control use. And, do
you can actually do.” all of that with the focus on solutions.
“If we can characterize the remedy, we can
motivate the customer,” Kirkeby said. “Our mantra with the customer: Deliver
actionable items. Information [by itself] doesn’t motivate.”
For Kirkeby, the timeline for interoperability to smart grid work should be
visualized in a more flexible, less linear fashion. You may have finished step A
(the basics of interoperability) and be knee-deep in step B (updating equipment
with smarter widgets, as Avista is doing with items as detailed as distribution
transformers) but never stop planning for where you should be at steps G, R or
T—all the way to that final, ending Z where the consumer sees benefits and can
control use with ease and comfort.
“It’s all about trying to define where you should be headed with the remainder
of the system,” he said. “Don’t just focus on interoperability. Instead, know your
system, know your plan and be strategic.”
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NEW CONVERSATION
STARTERS
Not all of the interesting details
of our chat with Curt Kirkeby
could be discussed in depth in
this short piece, but we wanted
to include a few other notes
from our fall discussion over
coffee in Spokane that may
start a conversation inside your
operations group, too. Kirkeby
additionally noted that:
? ? There are so many smart
grid standards that no
product can meet every
standard.
? ? There is no compelling
reason for the U.S. to
change from DNP to 61850,
and there is no bridge-over
component in place to
make that shift possible.
? ? The combination of an
industry slow to change
and standards that are
never finished tends to
hinder smart grid evolution.
? ? Shoving through XML for
interoperability to ensure
human readability may
be detrimental to the
developing data process.
? ? Every utility needs cross-
organization buy-in to
succeed in smart grid
implementation.
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