“Data is like garbage. You’d better know what you are going to do with it before you collect it.” ~ Mark Twain
Defining and Understanding Review
Last week, we introduced defining and understanding our FERC 881 compliance project. For review, we looked at:
- Defining the FERC 881 project
- Defining Facilities
- Defining MLSE Elements
- Defining Facility Ratings Calculations.
- High-Level Architecture and Project Design
High-Level Architecture and Project Design can run parallel with our previous step Definition and Understanding. With this hypothetical project with nine months, we are allocating 35 workdays for this step. This timeline depends on the resources of individual utilities, but running the two processes in parallel can speed up the overall project time. Additionally, this allows the plan’s optimization and alterations throughout the project.
Focusing Goals for Project Success
The main goal of this week’s installment of FERC Order 881 compliance implementation is to analyze all requirements, sources, and logic for all external (to the system) data needed to calculate the facility ratings:
- Analyze high-level system architecture requirements and data sources.
- Where is the network connectivity sourced?
- Where are the base ratings for the components?
- Analyze data and specify all data types per data source.
- Analyze interfacing technology, type, and logic (such as Unidirectional, bidirectional, etc.)
- Specify the number of interface requests per data source and data object.
- Analyze Network Model Sources
- Define which active model contains primary equipment.
- Determine if additional models are available or desired.
- E. is there a system of record for auxiliary equipment such as wave traps and conductors?
- Checking if the model elements are complete with rating information?
During the analysis of the base model, you may discover that certain elements lack rating information. In this case, identifying the source of the missing data takes additional time. In conclusion, success in this step requires correctly identifying and defining all required data specifications and sources.
Network Model
One important source for storing facility component connectivity will be the Network Model. A Network Model is a central repository and management system and is crucial for a sustainable FRM solution whether you use IPS® Network Model Management to store the connectivity and the ability to generate all needed components of the facility or chose to load the facility from a spreadsheet or list from another solution. Without the connectivity within the network model, it is exceedingly difficult to support the manual process of assuring that all shared equipment is updated in all facilities.
The IPS® Network Model Management meets all requirements for Network Model Management solutions published by EPRI in the “Network Model Manager Technical Market Requirements – The Transmission Perspective” and upgraded based on findings by the CIM User Group. This CIM-based object structure allows efficient data exchange with all CIM compliant applications, eliminating manual work of verifying and consuming data from other systems.
During the project design, there may be objects identified that do not currently reside in the network model. If this occurs, the project team must decide the necessity and handling of these objects.
Conclusion: Improved Project Design and High-Level System Architecture
This work can lead to well-defined and improved High-Level System Architecture, defined data sources, and defined data intelligence. All the data sources are defined, and all required interfaces, such as the interfacing technology, direction, number of interfacing requests needed, frequency of those requests, and description of the integration as either single side or end-to-end integration, are defined. Taking the time to understand the sources, data, and where that data will fit into complying with FERC 881 standards is vital to project completion.
Next week, our focus will be on System Configuration.
By Rebecca Day
