Electric utilities have different missions, size, cover different geographical areas and have different resources and capabilities therefore there are various approaches for managing a utility‟s operational and corporate networks.
The corporate network is usually managed by the IT or telecommunications department. In most cases IT is separate from telecommunications but there are utilities that have one common department for all IT and communications systems.
The operational network is being used by telecontrol (SCADA) or protection and control departments and typically is being managed by an internal telecommunications department.
Nevertheless driven by both economical and organizational factors some utilities tend to outsource the management of corporate network and less frequently the management of the operational network. As a consequence the existing knowledge regarding the network and the technology disappears. In some utilities only part of the network and systems or only selected communication services are outsourced to external companies. Currently the trends of outsourcing operational communications services are being analyzed and several utilities are revisiting this strategy.
Additional information about organizational and management issues related to operational telecommunications services in the electric utilities can be found in CIGRE TB461, April 2011 .
4.1.1 Dealing with responsibility for operational networks
Within the utilities we find different ways of designing and managing the operational network. The design and management is influenced by
The OPEX and TCO required
The available skills and knowledge base
The required service availability and resulting risk of outages.
From the organizational point of view the easiest situation is:
when the whole operational network is managed by the utility itself, or
when the whole operational network is completely outsourced to one or more third-party companies Even if the whole operational network is outsourced the utility still requires a minimum knowledge of the underlying communication architecture in order to manage the Service Level Agreement with the outsourcing company and jointly coordinate migration plans or future additions of devices and services.
However in real life different hybrid or mixed-responsibility approaches can be adopted in order to optimize available resources and fulfill particular requirements and constraints:
Only particular services or applications are procured or managed by third-party (e.g. mobile communications for field workforce or remote access to substation data retrieval, or video surveillance, etc.)
Only services to particular sites or geographical zones are procured or managed by third-party (wireless or leased fiber links in certain areas, etc.)
Only particular infrastructure layers or parts of the network are procured or managed by third-party (e.g. backbone transport services, etc.)
The situation can be even more complex when we consider that own personnel of the utility in charge of design and management of operational network can belong to different departments within the utility. Usually the utility personnel that designs and manages the operational network belong to:
Telecommunications department
Telecontrol- or protection and control department
In utilities that have more than one internal department dealing with management of operational network or operational services the split of responsibilities usually follows the example below:
Telecommunications department responsible for backbone network and communications between substations and between substations and control centers
Telecontrol- or protection and control department responsible for LAN network and communications within the substation
There is no best approach as it all depends on multiple factors already stated above such as available resources, knowledge, historical reasons, etc.
The fact that management of operational network in the utility is often split between telecommunications and telecontrol departments has historical reasons. Fifteen or twenty years back there were no data
communications inside substations as all signals were hardwired between IEDs and between IEDs and conventional RTUs with the use of copper cables. Basically all the equipment inside the substation was considered part of the protection and control system. Even with the posterior introduction of standards based serial communications and more recently with Ethernet or IP based communications this process still
remains globally unchanged in many utilities. Today the Ethernet switch that interconnects protection relays inside substation is facilitating transmission of IEC 61850 GOOSE messages carrying for example a
permissive trip signal to open the high voltage circuit breaker. This Ethernet switch is in fact replacing a pair of copper cables used in the past for the same purpose and it is a key element for ensuring proper
functioning of the system that is protecting the high voltage assets and facilitating a reliable supply of energy.
This explains why still many utilities put the frontier between what they consider belongs to protection and control systems and what belongs to telecommunications systems.
The recent interest in Smart Grid and trends to higher integration of electrical grid and information technology is putting pressure for such utility organization and systems where all communication enabled devices are monitored and integrated into a single information backbone. The goal of Smart Grid is to have all data from the electrical grid visible in a common bidirectional communications network and thus increase system reliability and efficiency while maintaining a certain level of security.
4.1.2 Organizational impact and human factor
There can exist significant differences in terms of mentality and technical skills between telecommunications engineers and protection and control engineers. The difference in mentality is based on the fact that
protection engineering relates to personal and asset security and therefore requires a certain level of conservatism ensuring the continous use of well-defined fundamentals that had been practiced intact for dozens of years. The IT and Telecommunications technology is changing in a much faster pace than the protection and control technology. The product lifecycle is longer in protective relaying than in the IT/Telecom business. The difference in technical skills is obvious as each group is expert in its own domain.
Apart from the differences in skillsets and in mentality there can also exist organizational issues caused by certain level of duplicity, lack of established procedures or weak communication between employees of the same utility that work in different departments.
The major organizational challenges many utilities face today in regards to communications technologies and its impact on operational network are listed below:
Difficulty being up to date with latest developments in IT and telecommunications technology
Lack of multidisciplinary experts with combined knowledge of networking and protection and control (eg. IEC 61850 Standard, substations primary and secondary equipment, etc.)
Weak internal communications between own employees and lack of well-established scope of responsibilities and procedures
New network deployment plans and implementation of new communications services can potentially be a motivation for the utility to create new multidisciplinary group or create a matricidal company organization with employees from multiple departments working together on a design and management of IP
communications network and functionally reporting to the same project manager. It is recommended to identify such opportunities in an early stage and anticipate it. Knowledge and management of the network could be clustered within the company inside a so called “expert group” not necessarily within the same department.
4.1.3 Technical skills of network designers
Network design requires two conditions to achieve the network deployment objectives:
theoretical knowledge of technology practical experience in the field
In addition to the IP knowledge there are new areas with their own specialties including:
Data transport technology Cyber Security
Remote access Traffic engineering Substation automation
The practical experience might be more important than theoretical knowledge, because it allows designers to have a general view of the network design and it allows also to avoid the deployment “traps”.
It is highly recommended that network designers work in parallel in the testing lab in order to cross check all the technical issues that may arise during the integration of equipment from different vendors. Before the network design is finalized pre-testing shall be run in the lab to mitigate the risks of interoperability issues, protocol incompatibility, etc.