The rise of energy delivery management systems

The advent of deregulation, performance-based rate making, privatization, guaranteed service contracts, an e-business economy, and other industry drivers have converged to create unparalleled momentum in the utility market to establish competitive position based on customer service, power quality, and reliability. At the same time, new developments in energy technologies are providing practical opportunities for utilities to apply distributed generation, AMR, distribution and substation automation, load management and other capabilities to meet their objectives in a restructuring industry. These factors combined represent an order of magnitude increase in the complexity of managing the energy distribution grid. An essential enabler for assimilating new technology, providing service options, reducing operational costs and improving reliability is the energy delivery management system. These systems support the capability to model the energy delivery system and its distributed elements, integrate and apply all necessary real-time operations information, dynamically manage connectivity and supporting resources, monitor real time performance and delivery security, alarm low reliability situations, and proactively recommend operational changes to achieve contract commitments, reliability objectives and improved economy. This paper describes the main characteristics of energy delivery management systems necessary to achieve secure, reliable and economic delivery of energy, and related implementation experience.