At the Distributech 2013 conference, the largest electric power distribution conference in North America with attendance of about 9600, earler ths year in San Diego, if there was one consistent message, it was
that smart grid has become mainstream – every utilty is doing something
related to smart grid. 

I was interested in how gespatial was being used for smart grid applications by vendors at Distributech.  At the conference there were something on the order of 400 talks and panels.  Of these only a few explicitly mentioned geospatial or GIS so you might have concluded that geospatial was not playing a very important role in smart grid.  But the reality is quite different.  I talked directly to about 18 companies, mostly vendors, whom I asked about their use of geospatial technology.  All but two said that they were using geospatial technology in some capacity.

Geospatial analytics

One of the most interesting from the perspective of the application of geospatial technology for analytics was Tantalus Systems.  Tantalus provides utilities with an intelligent communications infrastructure supporting smart grid. Tantalus’ network solutions rely on wired, wireless, or a combination for bidirectional communications.  Tantalus can integrate with well-known GISs like ArcGIS, or alternatively can provide an open source geospatial solution.

RF network analysis

Geospatial technology is used by Tantalus customers in several different capacities.  The first is to help identify problems or misalignment of resources in the radio frequency (RF) and electric grid network.  Visualizing the RF and distribution network geographically enables customers to identify and resolve problems in the RF network.   According to Dave Kauffman, Senior Product Manager for Applications and Interfaces at Tantalus, “GIS brings an entirely new dimension to problem solving for utilities. Before, our customers had to try to understand the source of problems by looking at tables and reports, but they found that with the geospatial view, the source of the problem, typically obstructions, became much easier to identify and correct.”

Predictive maintenance

Tantalus customers also use geospatial analytics to look for patterns in outages by overlaying historical outage events on the distribution network and maps showing soil types, weather patterns, and traffic density patterns. Using this type of analytical approach can identify patterns that make it possible to identify equipment that is susceptible to failure and correct the problem before it actually fails.

Reducing risk in Volt/VAR

One of the new areas where GIS is just beginning to be be applied is voltage maps, a new application that Dave is very excited about. When a utility is implementing Volt/VAR at a substation to reduce load, voltages reported by smart meters can be mapped geographically in real-time across the entire distribution network in the form of isovolt maps. This makes it possible to identify areas of low voltage in real time, which is critical because the voltage cannot be allowed to drop below a tolerance mandated by the regulator in order to avoid potential damage to utility and consumer devices.