IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2020 - 31

Interoperability standards enable disparate à la carte software
applications to communicate securely and cost-effectively in a
standardized way without expensive custom interfaces.
affordable rate. Interoperability standards enable data to be
shared in real time and analyzed more easily, which, lessens
the time spent responding to member requests.
Streamlined cybersecurity standards make future interface
upgrades relatively easy for vendors to build and provide the
ability to install updates without breaking interfaces and compromising secure information. Standardized interfaces save
money and resources. For example, market and user research
from the NRECA has determined that the MultiSpeak interoperability standard saves more than 833 electric distribution
cooperatives approximately US$39.5 million annually. Those
savings can be invested in new technologies, such as DERMs
and ADMSs, for grid optimization and modernization. The
dollar savings to larger electric utilities from using interoperability standards will likely be higher.

Model Harmonization
During the past 20 years, two software interoperability standards were adopted by the electric utility industry: MultiSpeak and the Common Information Model (CIM), which is
maintained by Technical Committee 57 of the International
Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Separate standards
continue to be a stumbling block for utility implementations. While different standards meet the disparate needs of
different communities, there are efforts to harmonize and
develop interfaces between them. For example, the MultiSpeak-IEC-CIM implementation is in progress to bridge
the standards and find the best of both worlds. The IEC and
MultiSpeak are expected to continue their collaboration to
develop international standards for harmonized profiles by
mapping between MultiSpeak, IEC Standard 61970 (interfaces for energy MSs), and IEC Standard 61968 (interfaces
for electric distribution systems).

International Interest in Interoperability
The benefits of interoperability standards and connectivity
between disparate utility systems are being realized internationally. Two examples in Turkey, Mapbis-Basarsoft and
PwrMetrix, recently started adopting interoperability standards to test and integrate GIS solutions with OMSs, outage data analytics, and other distribution optimization platforms. Mapbis-Basarsoft is collaborating with distribution
utilities, the NRECA, Aerinet Solutions, Turkey's Ministry
of Energy, and regulatory authorities. In the Philippines, 13
cooperatives in the Central Luzon region are working with
NRECA/PwrMetrix to adopt interoperability standards,
create a real-time benchmarking solution, and integrate a
january/february 2020

variety of critical systems, such as SCADA, OMSs, AMIs,
and more.

Case Studies
Wake Electric is a 42,000-m electric distribution cooperative
headquartered in Wake Forest, North Carolina. In late 2012,
it began looking at solutions for a dynamic and autonomous
conservation voltage reduction (CVR) solution to reduce the
financial impact of demand charges by lowering the overall
demand during peak load. One of the biggest integration
challenges is sending the AMI data necessary for the CVR
system to function properly. Without frequent meter voltage
data reads, the software has no way of knowing if the system voltage is too low and needs to be raised. To provide
the meter voltage data, Wake Electric set up a connection
between its AMI and the incoming CVR system. It began
by deploying the system to one substation and expanding it
to 68 feeders during a CVR event. The incorporation of an
interoperability standard enabled Wake Electric to implement the CVR, thus reducing its peak demand by up to
~4% and realizing a savings of US$95,000/month for seven
months out of the year, which represents a significant potential savings of US$665,000/year without employing custom
integration software. A key lesson is to consider the interoperability requirements when contracting with a vendor. Wake
Electric's connectivity requirements were negotiated into the
price of the CVR system implementation, saving money and
time later in the process.
At Western Indiana (WIN) Energy, a not-for-profit electric distribution partnership in southwestern Indiana that
serves nearly 17,000 homes and businesses, interoperability
protocol standardization enables the selection of software
that fits the co-op's business model better than a one-sizefits-all enterprise suite that includes systems the utility needs
bundled with others it may not want. This process is called
the best-of-breed approach, and prior to adopting interoperability protocols, electric distribution utilities, such as WIN
Energy, faced many challenges in developing it. One issue
was that the method of discovering how much information each software system knew about the process and data
needs of the other software was incomplete and insufficient
for achieving the desired data analytic goals. Another problem involved convincing vendors to acknowledge the need
for certain data sets that had varying degrees of detail and
granularity. The issue arose from utilities' need to pass what
vendors considered to be insignificant data into and out of
the vendors' systems, which is a critical step in the overall
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IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2020

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