POWER January 2012 - 49

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
(AMI) vendors and utilities to identify a set of
alerts and alarms that can be standardized to
enhance AMI security event monitoring. The
EPRI program in 2012 will continue this effort
and also focus on network security management
architectures for T&D systems. These
activities will support the long-term objective
of enhanced situational awareness across the
domains of the power delivery system.
Increasing the security of next-generation
energy delivery systems will require a combination
of new security architectures, tools, and
procedures that provide end-to-end security and
support defense-in-depth features. The EPRI
program will address this need by developing
protective measures, such as key management,
high-assurance architectures, and security testing
tools to validate the level of protection. The
program also will focus on reducing the security
risk of legacy systems through the development
of risk mitigation strategies, transition
strategies, and the assessment of substation security
solutions.
Although efforts to prevent and detect cyber
incidents are important for the protection
of control systems, they do not prepare for the
eventuality of a cyber incident. Energy delivery
systems also must be resilient to cyber incidents
and continue to perform critical functions while
under duress and during the recovery process.
EPRI's R&D is addressing part of this issue
by developing guidelines and best practices for
responding to cyber incidents on AMI systems.
In the future, the EPRI program will support
resiliency for the grid by focusing on decision
support tools for responding to cyber incidents,
as well as tools and techniques to support cyber
security forensics.
Make the Smart Grid Interoperable.
Interoperability is the ability of two devices or
systems to exchange information and use that
information to perform their functions. The vision
of the smart grid is that millions of devices
in different domains and with different owners
will be able to exchange information. This
exchange of information needs to happen with
minimal integration cost and difficulty.
The lack of mature, uniform standards to enable
interoperability among systems has been
cited by utilities and regulators as a reason for
not moving forward with smart grid applications
such as AMI. Investments in proprietary
systems risk long-term vendor lock-in and costly
" fork-lift " upgrades to fully take advantage of
new smart grid applications.
The key to interoperability is standards. The
use of standards to integrate complex systems
and components dramatically reduces both
implementation and operational costs. But for
devices and systems to communicate easily,
they must speak the same language. Standards
abound in the utility space, but they have different,
sometimes overlapping domains. Some
standards are mature and others are emerging.
Both technical and implementation gaps need
to be addressed simultaneously. Existing technical
standards for smart grid applications are incomplete
and have not been broadly adopted by
utilities, vendors, and third-party device manufacturers.
Some existing standards need to be
harmonized, and reference architectures and interface
standards that will enable interoperability
between equipment from different vendors
will need to be developed. In addition, many of
the existing standards do not address cyber security
or device management uniformly.
Achieving interoperability is a huge undertaking
that involves the active involvement of all
stakeholders, including the federal government,
standards development organizations, and user
groups. All of these activities need to be coordinated
and harmonized to enable data and
information to be shared with the people and
individuals who need it. ■
-Arshad Mansoor is senior vice
president, research & development for the
Electric Power Research Institute.
Presentations
Event Collateral
Media Kits
Direct Mail
Online Marketing
Recruiting Packages
Develop greater corporate awareness and showcase your
featured editorial from this industry respected publication.
BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY FOR THE GLOBAL GENERATION INDUSTRY
Vol. 151 * No. 10 * October 2007
www.powermag.com
Place your positive press directly in the
hands of your customers and associates
with custom reprints from POWER.
Top Plants: Four model coal-fired plants
Shock therapy KOs boiler fouling
Stop your boiler from sucking air
SS tube specs begin at the mill
integrated publishing solutions
800.290.5460 I POWER@theYGSgroup.com
The YGS Group is the authorized provider of custom reprint products from POWER.
FillerAd_7x4.875_Power.indd 1
January 2012 | POWER
1/14/2008 5:05:36 PM
www.powermag.com
49
http://www.powermag.com http://www.powermag.com
POWER January 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of POWER January 2012
