The Industrial Internet Consortium® announces its first
energy-focused testbed: the Communication and Control Testbed for
Microgrid Applications. Industrial Internet Consortium member
organizations Real-Time Innovations (RTI), National Instruments, and
Cisco, are collaborating on the project, working with power utilities
CPS Energy and Southern California Edison. Additional industry
collaborators include Duke Energy and the power industry organization –
Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP).
Today’s power grid relies on a central-station architecture not designed
to interconnect distributed and renewable power sources such as roof-top
solar and wind turbines. The system must over-generate power to
compensate for rapid variation in power generation or demands. As a
result, much of the benefit of renewable energy sources in neighborhoods
or businesses is lost. Efficiently integrating variable and distributed
generation requires architectural innovation.
The goal of the Communication and Control Testbed is to introduce the
flexibility of real-time analytics and control to increase efficiencies
in this legacy process – ensuring that power is generated more
accurately and reliably to match demand. This testbed proposes
re-architecting electric power grids to include a series of distributed
microgrids which will control smaller areas of demand with distributed
generation and storage capacity. These microgrids will operate
independently from the main electric power grid but will still interact
and be coordinated with the existing infrastructure.
The testbed participants will work closely with Duke Energy, which
recently published a distributed intelligence reference architecture, as
well as SGIP to help ensure a coordinated, accepted architecture based
on modern, cross-industry industrial internet technologies. The
Communications and Control framework will be developed in three phases
that will culminate in a field deployment that will take place at CPS
Energy’s “Grid-of-the-Future” microgrid test area in San Antonio, Texas.
The initial phases will be tested in Southern California Edison’s
Controls Lab in Westminster, CA. Below you’ll find a list of quotes from
the partners of the Industrial Internet Consortium and its members on
the Communication and Control Testbed.
“The smart grid is a critical infrastructure component of the Industrial
Internet of Things,” said Stan Schneider, RTI’s CEO and IIC Steering
Committee member. “The IIoT will span industries, sensor to cloud, power
to factory, and road to hospital. This key first step will address a
significant barrier to the efficient use of green energy.”
“Grid operators manage a vast infrastructure of generation, transmission
and distribution systems. We believe microgrids offer a path forward to
address the communication, load, and generation challenges facing
today’s grid system,” said Jamie Smith, Director of Embedded Systems,
National Instruments. “With this testbed, we are bringing together our
expertise to help push the industrial internet forward by working on the
architecture for the grid of tomorrow.”
“Analytics and controls are essential for a successful energy
transition, addressing limited scalability and renewables, siloed
networks, rigid controls and slow human intervention,” said Kip Compton,
VP/GM, Internet of Things Systems and Software Group, Cisco. “Cisco is
proud to take part in the deployment of this energy-centric testbed,
combining real time analytics on a highly secure microgrid architecture,
for a reliable and efficient grid of the future.”
The members of the Industrial Internet Consortium announced the
Communications and Control testbed at the Consortium’s one year
anniversary celebration in Reston, VA. To learn more about the
Communication and Control Testbed for Microgrid Applications, visit www.iiconsortium.org/microgrid.
About the Industrial Internet Consortium
The Industrial Internet Consortium is an open membership organization
with 151 members from 21 countries, formed to accelerate the
development, adoption, and wide-spread use of interconnected machines
and devices, intelligent analytics, and people at work. Founded by AT&T,
Cisco, General Electric, IBM, and Intel in March 2014, the Industrial
Internet Consortium catalyzes and coordinates the priorities and
enabling technologies of the Industrial Internet. Visit www.iiconsortium.org.
About RTI
RTI provides the connectivity platform for the Industrial Internet of
Things.
RTI Connext messaging software forms the core nervous system for
smart, distributed applications. RTI Connext allows devices to
intelligently share information and work together as one integrated
system. RTI was named “The Most Influential Industrial Internet of
Things Company” in 2014 by Appinions and published in Forbes.
Our customers span the breadth of the Internet of Things, including
medical, energy, mining, air traffic control, trading, automotive,
unmanned systems, industrial SCADA , naval systems, air and missile
defense, ground stations, and science. The total value of system designs
that trust RTI for their fundamental architecture exceeds $1 trillion.
RTI is committed to open standards, open community source and open
architecture. RTI provides the leading implementation of the Object
Management Group (OMG) Data Distribution Service (DDS) standard.
RTI is the world’s largest embedded middleware provider, privately
held and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.
About National Instruments
Since 1976, National Instruments has made it possible for engineers
and scientists to solve the world’s greatest engineering challenges with
powerful, flexible technology solutions that accelerate productivity and
drive rapid innovation. Customers from a wide variety of industries –
from healthcare to automotive and from consumer electronics to particle
physics – use NI’s integrated hardware and software platform to improve
the world we live in. National Instruments has been a member of the
Industrial Internet Consortium since June 2014.
About Cisco
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in IT that helps
companies seize the opportunities of tomorrow by proving that amazing
things can happen when you connect the previously unconnected. For
ongoing news, please go to http://thenetwork.cisco.com.
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relationship between Cisco and any other company.
Quotes From the Partners of the Industrial Internet Consortium on the
Communication and Control Testbed
“CPS Energy’s Grid of the Future and microgrid sites provide us with
hands-on experience using the latest technologies to provide security,
analytics, and interoperability to our distribution system – bridging
the gap between today’s smart grid technologies and the promise of the
industrial internet of things,” said Raiford Smith, VP, Corporate
Development and Planning, CPS Energy. “At CPS Energy, we are focused on
providing our customers with innovative solutions to meet their needs
while providing affordable, reliable electric and gas service.”
“SGIP securely accelerates and advances Grid Modernization through
interoperability,” said Sharon Allan, CEO of SGIP. “Testbeds are means,
by working together with leading industry players, to prove out
interoperability as we accelerate viable, sustainable options for energy
delivery.”
“SCE’s Controls Lab houses one of the only fully simulated grid
environments in North America,” said Andy Paylan, lead engineer in
Southern California Edison’s Advanced Technology group. “Our labs test
many grid technologies in various phases of the development cycle and it
will serve the consortium well for the Communication and Control Testbed
to go through simulations in the Control Lab before technology is
deployed on the grid.”
Copyright Business Wire 2015