IED Gateway Case Study

• Chi Carnegie

• System Integration Specialist

• SUBNET Solutions Inc.

• Canada

About the Utility Vertically Integrated Crown Corporation

Generation 41 Dam sites

30 Hydro Facilities

9 Thermal units

Transmission ~18,000 km of lines

~260 substations

Distribution ~56,000 km of distribution

lines

~1.8 million customers

The Problems

1. Too many devices to manage properly, approximately 10,000 devices in the field.

2. Access to device event data was non-existent or difficult due to terrain issues.

3. Without event data, root-cause analysis of circuit reliably was impossible.

4. Safety concerns.

5. Multi-vendor devices

Requirements for Solution

1. Efficient access and management of device settings 2. Traceable settings configurations and device

operation 3. Open access to data for analytics 4. Centralized access for equipment information

security 5. Centralized Password Management

Requirements for Solution (cont’d)

6. Centralized Access & Management for Commissioning Devices

7. Logging of activities on the Equipment or Devices 8. Support NERC CIP Compliance 9. Manage the Configuration and Firmware upgrades

with version configuration file control 10.Vendor agnostic 11.Scalable for future expansion

System Architecture

IED Management System

Field Devices

7

End Users

Modular Solution

• Remote Engineering Access

• Password Management

• Fault File Management

• Configuration File Management

• Document Management

The Project – Agile Development

Instead of delivering one major update to the software, the features were staged and delivered to the utility in an incremental fashion. Benefits: 1. Utility was able to evaluate

functionality early. 2. There was transparency in

project progress.

The Project – Driving Innovation

• The customer was involved in the definition of new features and capabilities of IED Management System.

• These are win-win scenarios:

1. The customer receives the product they are looking for.

2. Integration company increases the functions and capabilities of its software that other users can take advantage of.

The Project – Driving Innovation

1. Application Driver 2. Device State 3. Device Communication Status 4. Manually Triggered Functions

– Communications Status Check – Get Data – Get Configuration – Get SOE – Get Fault Files – Jobs – Sequence of Events – Publishing Configurations

Application Driver

• Identified a relay to be a closed system. The protocols are proprietary, forcing users who want to manage their devices to use their software.

• In an analysis of the protocol, it was evident that parts of the messages were encrypted and/or hashed.

IED Management

System

Engineering Access

Password Change

Fault File Collection

Configuration Transfer

Configuration Differencing

Vendor Comm Driver

Proprietary protocol

?

Application Driver (cont’d)

• Controlling the end device was done through the vendor application instead of directly to the device through the communication protocol. This is called an Application Driver in the IED Management System.

Vendor Application

Driver

IED Management

System

Engineering Access

Password Change

Fault File Collection

Configuration Transfer

Configuration Differencing

Virtual Tunnel

Device State

A device can now be in one of 4 states that affect what functions IED Management System provides to the device.

State Viewable in Object Lists

Editable Attributes

Remote Engineering Access Management

Password Management

Monitor for Configuration Changes

SharePoint Integration

Active X X X X X X

Disabled X X X

Tagged X X X

Decommissioned X

Device Communication Status

The different services accessible from the device are periodically checked for access and their current status is reported directly on the device page.

Manually Triggered Functions

Functions that can be performed against the device have been moved to the main device page for easy manual triggering.

Jobs Status

Every action taken against the device is reported in the Job section of the device page.

Sequence of Events

IED Management System now has a Sequence of Events database and normalizes and stores all SOE information from devices into the database.

Publishing Configurations

Published device configurations can be sent down directly to the device.

All Together on One Dashboard

The information is presented together on one organized dashboard that represents all of the information for that device.

Overall Solution

22

Lessons Learned

• The Agile process was key to its success.

• Proprietary protocol challenges can be overcome.

• Vendor tools can be integrated into the software to provide a seamless user experience.

Thank-you!

Questions?