IEEE Electrification - December 2022 - 18

particularly relevant as resource owners
become more active grid participants
(e.g., through aggregating
entities). For resource owners to provide
services at the transmission level,
it is important that both resource
owners and RTOs are aware of the distribution
grid state to ensure that they
can both safely comply with the dispatch
orders. As more grid edge
resources come online, safe and effective
data communication practices
increase not only grid efficiency but
also grid safety.
As more grid edge
resources come
online, safe and
effective data
communication
practices increase
not only grid
efficiency but also
grid safety.
Stakeholder Adoption
In addition to the technical gaps,
another area blocking grid edge visibility is simply stakeholder
capability and interest. Although the value proposition
of grid edge visibility at the transmission level is
well established, distribution operators face a number of
obstacles in adopting the methods and technologies necessary
to improve their grid edge frameworks. Distribution
grid managers cite budget constraints, regulatory
hurdles, and lack of resources/expertise as three of the
largest barriers preventing their utility from enabling the
infrastructure necessary for grid edge visibility.
To partially address budget challenges, developments
in the technical areas should include evaluations
of the value proposition of resolving the gaps.
Work that demonstrates or emphasizes the economic
gain of implementing the proposed solutions has the
potential to be more valuable than technical solutions
alone. Further, stakeholders might not have the expertise
to effectively implement and manage new sensor
technologies or advanced analytics. Case studies that
demonstrate how to effectively deploy new technologies
might be valuable, as might be the development
of human-machine interface and visualization
technologies to display the new
data sources in an accessible way.
Gap Importance Levels
The gaps can be roughly categorized
into four groups; however, there is
substantial overlap among them.
Improvements in weather sensing
and forecasting, for example, will also
improve short- and long-term forecasts
of grid edge output, and the
installation of new grid edge monitoring
sensors is also an opportunity for
standardizing data formats. Table 2
provides a more granular list of the
capability gaps as well as a rough
qualitative assessment of the importance
of these gaps based on the literature cited in this
gap analysis. Importance levels of " high, " " medium, " and
" low " indicate that addressing the gap would yield substantial,
moderate, or little (respectively) benefit to the
entity, relative to current practices. As indicated in the
table, grid edge visibility has the highest priority gaps at
the distribution level.
Although ISOs and RTOs face important challenges
TABLE 2. Qualitative assessments of the importance of several
varieties of grid edge visibility gaps to different grid entities.
Gap Type
Weather sensing
Grid edge static data
Grid edge output sensing
Intrahour grid edge forecasting
Day-ahead grid edge forecasting
Sensor interoperability
Data standards and sharing
18
ISO/RTO
High
Medium
Medium
High
High
Medium
High
IEEE Electrification Magazine / DECEMBER 2022
Distribution
Operator
High
Medium
High
High
Low
High
High
Low
Low
High
Low
Low
Low
Low
related to grid edge technologies, particularly in the
areas of weather and grid edge output forecasting,
many of these entities have already begun to develop
in-house or third-party frameworks to address them.
Distribution grids also face these challenges, and distribution
operators are at the front line of grid edge
installation, so it will be important to engage them for
the installation of new sensing technologies necessary
for high-resolution monitoring that can increase grid
edge visibility as well as integrating them into their
management practices. Further, developing frameworks
that enable distribution operators to efficiently
and securely exchange these new data streams with
ISOs and RTOs will better enable the latter to address
the gaps they face.
Consumer-level gaps restricted
to the scope of grid edge visibility
are challenging to define compared
to gaps at the other two scales, and
they will partly depend on how
RTOs and distribution operators
choose to address grid edge technologies
in the near future. For
example, encouraging DER owners
to install end-use monitors can
improve grid edge visibility, so it is
a gap in the overall grid-level grid
edge management framework.
From the perspective of the consumer,
however, this isn't a gap,
per se, in the sense that under the
Aggregator/
Customer
IEEE Electrification - December 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Electrification - December 2022
