IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2016 - 32

network security and reliability
rules, interoperability rules, transparency rules."
Meanwhile, in the United states
(with similar efforts elsewhere), national legislation has led to the unOperations
bundling of previously vertically inService Provider
tegrated utilities and the promotion
Markets
of wholesale electricity markets
managed by regional transmission
organizations (rtos) and independent system operators (iso),
regulated by the Federal energy
regulatory commission. in recent
years, nist was assigned "priTransmission
Customer
Distribution
mary responsibility to coordinate
development of a framework that
includes protocols and model standards for information management
to achieve interoperability of smart
grid devices and systems..." this
Generation
framework is seen as necessary to
ensure that the goals of the smart
Secure Communication Flows
grid vision are achievable. Without
Electrical Flows
it, there is a risk that the diverse
Domain
smart grid technologies, such as
smart meters that are being widely
deployed and synchrophasors that
figure 1. The NIST smart grid conceptual model. (Source: Updated NIST Smart Grid
provide real-time assessments of
Framework 3.0, Feb. 2014.)
power system health to provide
system operators with better information
for
averting
disastrous
outages, will become prema(dsos), power exchanges, power suppliers or technology
providers, is key to the optimization of the overall system. turely obsolete or, worse, be implemented without adequate
transmission system operators (tsos) manage the back- security measures.
bone of the electricity supply for the benefit of society.
the importance of this role has been widely recognized IT Complexity and Interoperability
and sealed in the third energy package of the european With the opening of electricity markets, the complexity of
Union (eU).
products and derivatives being traded as well as the number
in europe, the ec, together with many stakeholders, has of business processes have increased many times over. the
established that greater effort is needed to create a secure, com- transactions volume and the need to process data in everpetitive, and low-carbon european energy sector and a pan- shorter timescales required the development of an efficient
european ieM. network codes are intended as a tool to reach support from it systems.
this objective by complementing existing national rules to tackle
With increasing complexity of each market and greater
cross-border issues in a systematic manner. they are sets of requirements for interaction between market areas, it became
rules that apply to one or more parts of the energy sector. the apparent that it complexity and a lack of interoperability
need for them was identified during the course of developing was becoming a major hindrance to an open and fully functhe third energy package by the eU. More specifically, regula- tional electricity market.
tion (ec) 714/2009, which deals with conditions for access to
all of this has practical implications with intensive
the network for cross-border exchanges in electricity, sets out the computer-based automation. increasingly, such automation
areas in which network codes will be developed and a process depends on multiple systems at multiple locations owned
for developing them. article 8 of this regulation, "tasks of the and operated by multiple parties to cooperate within defined
entso-e (european network of transmission system opera- business scenarios. it requires information produced by systors for electricity)," states "... entso-e shall adopt com- tem a and system b to be consumable by system c to promon network operation tools to ensure coordination of network duce information for system d in time frames that may not
operation..." this includes "data exchange and settlement rules, tolerate errors or human intervention. to make this happen,
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ieee power & energy magazine

january/february 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2016