Remote - December 2011 - (Page 10)

Applications - Feature CMS Deploys Energy Smart Grid Project Michael D. Zola Vice President, Energy Division, LiveData, Inc. Edward Bride, Editorial Consultant CMS Enterprises operates the non-utility businesses of CMS Energy, and is recognized as a world-class operator of independent power generating plants. The company is refocusing its business strategy to concentrate on its independent power business in the US. Currently the company has an ownership interest in seven generating plants in Michigan and North Carolina. Three of these generating plants are part of CMS’ smart grid project, which is intended to improve the responsiveness and resilience of plant production under changeable market and physical conditions. The Dearborn Industrial Generation (DIG) facility is located in Dearborn, Mich. The facility produces up to 710 megawatts of electricity and over 1 million pounds per hour of steam. DIG sells a portion of its electricity to third-party customers, and the remainder to the mid-west energy markets. DIG sells its steam to nearby industrial customers for their heating and processing needs. The facility consists of a 160 MW natural gas fired combustion turbine that entered service in 1999 and another 550 MW from two more natural gas fired combustion turbines (operating in combined cycle with three boilers) that entered service in 2001. DIG is fueled by a combination of natural gas and blast furnace gas, a byproduct of a nearby steel-making process. The Kalamazoo River Generating Station facility, located in Comstock, Mich., is a single 68 MW simple-cycle combustion turbine fired with natural gas. The Livingston Generating Station facility located in Gaylord, Michigan consists of four simple-cycle combustion turbines totaling 156 MW, able to reach full load in about 10 minutes. CMS Enterprises operates these plants and is sole owner. CMS had its own ideas about the smart grid, and how to manage it. As a starting point, whatever they did they needed to ensure that senior managers had access to real-time data from its plants through the CMS web portal, while extending ‘this view to plant control room personnel without adding more fixed SCADA displays. The company’s vision was to provide power tools for plant operators, so that decision making that requires “human in the loop” is streamlined and empowered by automated displays. The goal was to give operators and managers real-time access to unit net MW and AGC control on individual units, views for combined output, display start/stop instructions, LMP and pricing, real-time market results, penalty calculations and conditions, emergency messages through MISO market interface and alarms with an audible tone to draw operator attention. The company also required easy access to 24-hour schedules, load trends, current plant output and ability to store data for one month all in one system. The system needed to support viewing previous-hour activity on a trend display and send data to a corporate SQL database. The system also had to generate reports. One important tool that CMS chose to support this initiative is LiveData SmartGrid Manager (dubbed a dashboard by CMS), a data integration and visualization platform. LiveData SmartGrid Manager provides real-time views into plant status through standard web browsers, reducing the need for SCADA workstations, while providing management with business insight into current operations. SmartGrid Manager interfaces with critical components of the distribution smart grid, including AMI (automated meter infrastructure) and DRR (demand response reserve). This is especially important because, while both provide the means to manage power flow and energy on the demand side, neither provides a way to geographically report power or telemetry loss or help on the supply side. 10 www.RemoteMagazine.com CMS already used LiveData RTI, a real-time integration platform, to fulfill regulatory and communication requirements in the MISO market. Through the selection process and LiveData’s history with the company, CMS anticipated being able to fulfill its vision of streamlined decision making with SmartGrid Manager, which incorporates a dashboard with RTI. CMS initially added the LiveData dashboard at its Dearborn Industrial Generation plant to exchange, display, and report MISO ASM participation data and plant operation data. Importantly, the system leverages Microsoft Silverlight to provide richly interactive displays using web browsers already deployed on CMS desktops. The dashboard is accessed only through HTTPS and Active Directory authentication using CMS’ corporate network. The LiveData dashboard gives the plant operators a market snapshot consolidated with a view of overall plant operations. This has lead to greater operator awareness of the plant’s role in the market place, resulting in a dramatically improved ability to generate profitable revenue based on changing market opportunities. CMS has since extended this functionality to its Kalamazoo and Livingston plants, generating reports for these two plants. The company is forwarding telemetry from the Kalamazoo and Livingston plants to MISO through its existing MISO ICCP connection. The new dashboard views and data flows are hosted on the company’s existing LiveData RTI Servers installed at the DIG plant. Before-and-After The initial system context was as follows: The Project New System Context: The Solution The data from Kalamazoo and Livingston is delivered to LiveData RTI server through a new Modbus/ TCP/IP connection via a Data Concentrator maintained by CMS. Plant output data from Kalamazoo and Livingston http://www.RemoteMagazine.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Remote - December 2011

Utility Telecom Spending Could Reach $3.2 Billion by the End of 2011
Securing Remote Substations for a Smarter Grid
Maximize Range While Minimizing Power Consumption in Wireless Digital Transmission
CMS Deploys Energy Smart Grid Project
Satellite Technology – The Key to Remote Communications for Government Agencies
American Innovations Releases Bullhorn RM4012 Remote Monitoring System
ProSoft Releases Modbus TCP/IP to IEC 61850 Gateway
Pelco Introduces the New Digital Sentry
CEITEC S.A. Releases RFID Chip for Logistics Application
C&D Technologies Introduces Liberty MSE 2 V VRLA Line
Industry News
Calendar of Events
Washington State Archives Keeps Cool with Environmental Monitoring

Remote - December 2011