Practical Adoption of Cloud Computing in Power Systems—Drivers, Challenges, Guidance, and Real-World Use Cases

Motivated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) recent direction and ever-growing interest in cloud adoption by power utilities, a Task Force was established to assist power system practitioners with secure, reliable and cost-effective adoption of cloud technology to meet various business needs. This paper summarizes the business drivers, challenges, guidance, and best practices for cloud adoption in power systems from the Task Force’s perspective, after extensive review and deliberation by its members, including grid operators, utility companies, software vendors, and cloud providers. The paper begins by enumerating various business drivers for cloud adoption in the power industry. It follows with the discussion of the challenges and risks of migrating power grid utility workloads to the cloud. Next, for each corresponding challenge or risk, the paper provides appropriate guidance. Notably, the guidance is directed toward power industry professionals who are considering cloud solutions and are yet hesitant about the practical execution. Finally, to tie all the sections together, the paper documents various real-world use cases of cloud technology in the power system domain, which both the power industry practitioners and software vendors can look toward to design and select their own future cloud solutions. We hope that the information in this paper will serve as helpful guidance for the development of NERC guidelines and standards relevant to cloud adoption in the industry.