Data communications in a deregulated environment

The trend toward electric utility deregulation is moving full speed ahead throughout the world. As a result, the integration, consolidation, and dissemination of information both inter- and intra-utility has become a critical piece of the deregulation picture. Information traditionally used only within a given utility now becomes desired by many players. The general trend in the industry has been toward the use of the Internet for the transfer of data. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) launched a concept in 1990 known as the Utility Communication Architecture (UCA). The goal behind UCA was to identify a suite of existing communication protocols that could be easily mixed and matched, provide the foundation for the functionality required to solve the utility enterprise communication issues, and be extensible for the future. UCA provides a network solution to the interconnection of data sources, similar to the Web solution used throughout the world to interconnect computers. At this time, the next generation of intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) based on UCA are coming to the market. These devices are focused on networking in the substation and are based on an MMS/Ethernet profile with one of two networking layers in between.