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Managing Smart Meter Infrastructures
2.3.09   Jeremy Johnson, Product Manager, Silver Spring Networks

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    By now most public utilities have plans for, or are already implementing, some flavor of smart metering platform. Smart meter technologies, deployment approaches, and capabilities vary by vendor, but they all have two-way communications in common. The ability to manage and operate the new two-way infrastructure will dramatically impact the success of any utility's smart metering project.

    So, what does "manage and operate" mean in the context of a smart meter infrastructure? There probably isn't any short answer that will neatly fit in this space, so I'll start with what I'm not talking about. I'm not talking about reading meters, or detecting power outages, or measuring power quality. I'm not even talking about deployment and provisioning; at least, not directly.

    I'm talking about network management. Network management includes all of the stuff in between the deployment and the reading of meters. Network management is the care and feeding of the smart meter infrastructure, and if it isn't done well, some or all of the objectives of your smart metering project are designed to fail.

    Network Management Fundamentals

    The ISO (International Organization of Standardization) developed a standard telecommunications management model back in the 1980s. Always good with helpful acronyms, the ISO referred to the model by the acronym FCAPS (usually pronounced F-Caps). FCAPS stands for the five primary areas of network management as defined by the ISO: Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance, and Security. The protocols and standards that resulted from the ISO's early work on network management tend to be irrelevant in terms of modern network technology. The ideas have proven resilient though, so I'll be using the FCAPS model to form a baseline here.

    Faults include any defect or malfunction that has an operational impact on the network. Faults occur every day, even on the best networks. Left undetected, faults can cripple a network. Faults are generally detected by network management software in one of two ways. First, a node (or nodes) on the infrastructure itself may asynchronously signal that a fault has occurred. Secondly, faults may be triggered by the analysis of historic performance and capacity data.

    Configuration includes any soft change to any node on the network. Soft changes include version and configuration. Unfortunately for operators, soft changes to infrastructure are very common. Firmware must be upgraded and configuration parameters must change to enable new business objectives, to fix bugs, to remedy faults, and to optimize performance. Accounting is an odd term for network management, and it is probably more convenient to think of accounting in terms of capacity management. Capacity management is about managing the resources of the network, including memory, transmit and receive buffers, CPU utilization, and bandwidth.

    Performance is one of the hardest areas of network management to pin down, but it does mean exactly what it seems to mean. Performance tries to answer the question: How well are things working? In some cases, objective measures are simple to observe (round trip time, application run time, routing convergence, etc.). In most cases, though, performance is a subjective measure that is primarily tied to unique business requirements. Regardless of the measurement, performance management often becomes the dominant aspect of network management.

    Security is the final broad area of network management. At its most basic, security management includes alerts based on clearly identifiable security breaches or attempted breaches. For example, a security alert may result from an unauthorized network device attempting to send routing updates. Security management can also include indications of abuse or excessive use of resources. Security concerns are so ubiquitous in network management that they impact every other management category.

    Network Management for Utilities

    Fortunately for all of us, networks and network applications have come a long way, and we're finally seriously talking about networking public utility infrastructure. Networking at the scale of a utility is not easily accomplished, though, not even with current technology, and it presents new network management challenges in terms of scale, user interface, and automation.

    Smart meter networks are taking network scale to levels previously unthinkable. A single smart meter deployment may have anywhere from 100,000 to more than 10 million end-points and intermediate nodes. In some architectures, each end-point may also serve as a router. For the sake of comparison, even the largest Internet Service Providers typically manage far fewer than 100,000 routers within their infrastructure -- and that's on the small end of a smart meter deployment.

    Regardless of the total number, each device in a smart meter network must be managed. Each device has software that must be upgraded periodically. Each device has a configuration that must be managed. Each device has resources that must be used effectively, and the network at large has a finite amount of bandwidth available across all of those devices. Each device must adhere to overall performance and security policies, as well. In addition to the sheer number of devices that utilities will be operating, they will also need to cope with the massive accumulation of management data over time.

    Just as network management data may overwhelm disk arrays, it may also overwhelm operators. Network management system user interfaces typically represent networks with charts, graphs, event lists, and logical maps. There's nothing necessarily different in the approach that a smart meter operation may take, but the requirement to filter and distill information from management data has never been more important. Also, due to smart meter vendors' use of radio frequency and mesh routing technologies, logical maps will have to be augmented by accurate geographical representations of the infrastructure.

    Automations must be ubiquitous in order for massive smart meter networks to be successful. Network software and configuration upgrades alone could threaten the viability of a project if not sufficiently automated. Automations around capacity, performance, fault, and security policies will also be necessary in order to maintain an effective network infrastructure. Long gone are the days of troubleshooting every slow network path with a manual traceroute or poking around a configuration from a command line. These new networks are just too big for that, and we'll need good management software and new techniques to bridge the gap.

    Bridging the Gap

    One approach to address each of the challenges of managing a large smart meter network is to employ a network element management (NEM) solution compatible with the rest of your smart grid communications applications. Combined with a compatible distributed networking technology and data stores, this approach allows you the ability to manage your network elements in the following ways:

    Fault detection and reporting will be handled by standard asynchronous trap messages sent to the network element manager from any compatible communication device. Faults may also be detected based on performance or capacity policies that are applied to periodically polled metrics. Faults can even be detected from some other applications. All faults are represented in the NEM event list, and can even be filtered and displayed geographically. Faults may also be forwarded (also by policy) to a third-party manager of managers (MoM). Event forwarding allows operators to deal with faults across a heterogeneous infrastructure from a single MoM console.

    Capacity (or Accounting, if you'd prefer) metrics will be periodically gathered from all infrastructure devices. A set of standard reports is provided for the most important capacity metrics, while any capacity metric (or set of metrics) may be charted on demand. NEM will also automatically manage capacity against thresholds applied to any metric. Whenever a threshold is violated an event is created in the event list, which can also be forwarded to a MoM if so desired.

    Performance metrics are managed in much the same way as capacity metrics. Some of the standard performance metrics measured by NEM should include routing efficiency, network stability, and network availability. Standard reports should be available for the most important performance metrics as well as on-demand charts. Routing metrics may even be displayed geographically, thus allowing operators to easily identify environmental issues and "pockets of badness" that would otherwise be hidden in the network.

    Security management will be ubiquitous throughout technologies in the system. Applications are secured with user roles, credentials, and encryption. Network resources are secured by key exchange for authentication and encryption for privacy. Device security is managed by proactive alerts (traps) sent to NEM and security counters maintained on each device.

    NEM will also provide an interactive diagnostic console for those times when manual troubleshooting can't be avoided and a network management dashboard for those times when only a glance is necessary.

    Conclusion

    Network management should be a major consideration when evaluating and deploying a smart meter network. Smart meter projects will result in some of the largest networks the planet has ever witnessed. Those networks surely cannot succeed without management solutions that are capable of addressing all of the major management categories while also meeting the new challenges presented by tremendous scale and new technologies.

    For information on purchasing reprints of this article, contact Tim Tobeck ttobeck@energycentral.com.
    Copyright 2010 CyberTech, Inc.
     
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    Readers Comments

    Date Comment
    Bob Amorosi
    2.3.09
    Jeremy,

    Timely and good article. Network management is a mature discipline that originated from the computer and electronics industries many years ago. The principle messages of your article are that utility companies should and must employ it to run a successful AMI network with smart meters, and secondly, their shear sizes will break new frontiers in scale perhaps uncovering new challenges and problems.

    Unfortunately there are nagging business problems in our regulated utility industry that will hinder the adoption of network management. The industry evolves historically at a snail's pace relative to other industries, mainly because investment in any new technologies requires them to recover their costs through the lengthy regulatory process, leading ultimately to unpalatable consumer rate increases to fund it. Furthermore the concept of soft(ware) upgrades to network nodes as a part of network management is very distasteful to utility companies. Once deployed into the field, smart meters and data collection infrastructure are expected to remain as is for many years WITHOUT change, because routine changes mean greater costs. Indeed when utility companies go shopping for AMI technology, they take years before they buy, and when they do they place large orders for equipment they don't want to have to maintain or replace for many years again.

    To alleviate this dilemma, the utility industry needs a makeover that will allow them to raise new money without going through the massive red tape of the regulatory process.

    Bob Amorosi, M.Eng., Resident of Ontario Canada

    Dan Shahar
    2.3.09
    Cool article, thanks! Just one reservation:

    In the beginning of your article, you write, "Smart meter technologies, deployment approaches, and capabilities vary by vendor, but they all have two-way communications in common." You go on to describe the vast amounts of new information that will need to be digested by utilities, and end by pointing to the potential advantages to be found in an advanced network element management solution (which, incidentally, Silver Spring Networks would be happy to provide).

    But while I agree that such systems will be important for many utilities, I'm not sure about the impression you create that all smart systems will necessarily be as advanced and data-intensive as the ones you describe. About a year ago, Austin Energy was singing the praises of the simpler one-way communicating systems that Comverge helped them to implement (see http://www.comverge.com/knowledge-support/casestudy/austin-article.pdf ), and just a few weeks ago there was an article on Ars Technica questioning the need for the more sophisticated smart metering systems (see http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/12/how-smart-does-the-grid-need-to-be.ars ). Have I been listening to the wrong people?

    Len Gould
    2.3.09
    Dan: It is likely that any "smart metering" or AMI system which doesn't include two-way communication with at least a decent capacity will be obsolete far before it's planned life and a waste of money inversted. Several main reasons. a) rapidly increasing costs of energy at source will shortly mean customers will demand TOU, or even real-time, rates. b) very soon, distributed micro-CHP generation (GE SOFC fuel cell home heating boilers, Whispergen stirling engine boilers, Honda's entries, etc.) will implement a requirement for smart two-way time-sensetive metering. c) soon-widespread PHEV / EV charging which, for the survival of the grid MUST be forced into off-peak periods nce any reasonable penetration. d) others.

    George Cosio
    2.4.09
    Jeremy, good article.

    In my experience there is an important lesson here in level setting utilities on the operation and maintenance requirements of a Smart Metering network. The primary challenge revolves around the fact that the technology and processes in this area are still evolving; therefore naturally there is a tendency for associating Smart-Meter network management with traditional distribution operations or IT network systems management. Although both of these areas are very mature, gaps exist when considering their application to the management of a Smart-Meter network.

    Incorporating tools which leverage best practices, like FCAPS, early in the planning and design of a Smart-Meter deployment should be a priority.

    Bob Amorosi
    2.4.09
    George,

    It is true that the technology and processes of a Smart Metering Network are still evolving. But this is nothing new to the electronics and computer industries, since computers and communications networks have constantly evolved, and changed quite dramatically over time at that. The result of this constant change has been the evolution of a high-tech industry that has THRIVED off innovation that drives much of the changes.

    The REAL problem in the utility industry is that utilities don't particularly like changes to their infrastructure too often because it requires them to spend money to implement them.

    What is currently happening in Smart Meter Networking technology development is that many utility companies will sit back guiding their AMI providers to continuously refine it - until it reaches a stage a utility company is comfortable will meet their needs once deployed in the field for many years WITHOUT substantial changes. They want their cake and eat it too as they say, and at that point a typical utility company will proceed to commit to buying the technology on a large scale, provided they can also fund it through the regulatory process. This is quite a different commercialization process than the computer networking industry is accustomed to. In essence it explains why the utility industry evolves historically at a snail's pace, where they don't upgrade or replace their infrastructure very often relative to many other industries.

    I suggest it will be impossible for AMI systems to avoid continuous evolution, even within a utility company after a large scale network has been deployed. This is partly because it is a very new application of networking, and the unprecedented size scales of these networks will uncover new problems and challenges that only actual large-scale field use may uncover.

    Fred Kesinger
    2.18.09
    How well do you feel utility companies are managing this activity?

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