International Journal of Computer Information Systems, Vol. 3, No.

3, 2011

Power System Control Centers Using Cloud Computing

Shweta Saha
School of Computing Sciences and Engineering Vellore Institute of Technology Vellore, Tamilnadu, India.

Prof. S. Margret Anouncia

School of Computing Sciences and Engineering Vellore Institute of Technology Vellore, Tamilnadu , Iindia

Abstract In this paper, the functions and architecture of control centers are reviewed. Present days control centers are based on Grid services or Grid computing and Web services. Energy efficiency is increasingly important for power system control centers because of increased usage of information and communication technologies (ICT) and increased energy costs. Cloud Computing is a promising approach for delivering data center resources. In this paper, a Cloud computing and web service based energy efficient future based power system control center is stipulated.
Keywords- Power system control center, energy management

system, cloud computing. I. INTRODUCTION

monopoly. The centralized configuration in which data from several remote devices were fed into a single computer was a ubiquitous configuration in the process control industry. This architecture fit the needs of the power system then. Over the years, networking and communications technologies in the computer industry have progressed significantly. Large amounts of data are involved in a control center. In a conventional control center, real-time data are collected from RTUs. Historical data and forecasted data are stored in storage devices. Different sets of application data are used by different application servers. Display file data are used by GUI (graphical user interface) Workstations. Various copies of data have to be coordinated, synchronized, and merged in databases.

The control center is the central nerve system of the power system. It senses the pulse of the power system, adjusts its Condition, coordinates its movement, and provides defense against exogenous events. In this paper, we review the functions And architectures of control centers: their present and likely future. Control centers should be provided with a means for rapid checks on stable and safe capacity limits of system elements through the use of digital computers. The resulting computer based control center, called the Energy Management System (EMS), achieved a quantum jump in terms of application software capabilities. Presently Control centers are based on Grid services which are decentralized, integrated and flexible. The idea of Grid Computing is motivated by the electric grids of which their resources are shared and consumers are unaware of their origins. II.CONVENTIONAL CONTROL CENTERS:

Fig.1.Conventional control center architecture

A. Architecture:
The conventional control system was designed at a time when the power Industry was a vertically integrated

III. ENABLED TECHNOLOGIES: A. Distributed System:

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In the last 20 years, rapid evolution has been made in distributed systems, including distributed file systems, distributed memory systems, network operating systems, middleware etc. As a result of the recent advent of high-speed networking, the single processor-computing environment has given way to distributed network environment. A distributed system here refers to a collection of independent computers that appears to its users to be a single coherent system[1]. The important characteristic is that to the user a distributed system presents no difference whether there is a single computer or multiple computers. A distributed system attempts to hide the intricacies and heterogeneity of the underlying hardware and software by providing a virtual machine on which applications can be easily executed. A distributed system is supported by both hardware and software, and its architecture determines its system functions. The most important element of the architecture is the operating system, which acts as the resource manager for applications to share resources such as CPUs, memories, peripheral devices, the network, and data.

International Journal of Computer Information Systems, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2011 More specifically, the idea of grid computing is to provide: Universal access to computing resources; Seamless global aggregation of resources; Seamless composition of services.

c. Grid Service based Present Control centers:

In a Grid-service environment, everything is a service. Present control centers have data services provided throughout the power system. Data acquisition services collect and timestamp the data, validate and normalize them, and then make it available. Data processing services process data from various sources for deposition into databases or high level applications. Applications will call data services and data will be delivered just in-time for critical applications. Various functions serving the needs of control centers are carried out as application services. Traditional applications, such as contingency analysis, congestion management, may be further decomposed into their constituent components, for example, power flows, OPF, etc.

B. Grid Computing and Grid Services: There is a paradigm, called Grid computing [2][4], that has emerged out of cluster computing. It is a clustering of a wide variety of geographically distributed resources (computer CPUs and memories) to be used as a unified resource, yet it provides seamless access to and interaction among these distributed resources, applications and data. A virtual organization is formed when an application is invoked. This new paradigm is built on the concept of services in the service-oriented architecture. However, Grid computing has generalized the concept of software services to resources. In other words, resources in Grid computing are provided as services. Grid computing renders Grids resources and Grid applications to consist of dynamically composed services. The motivation and the vision of Grid computing are to develop: A world in which computational power (resources, services, data) is as readily available as electrical power and other utilities, in which computational services make this power available to users; In which these services can interact to perform specified tasks efficiently and securely with minimal human intervention.

The designer of control centers develops data and application services, and no longer needs to be concerned with the details of implementation, such as the location of resources and information security, provided the services are properly registered in the Grid environment. The new business model is that the software vendors will be service providers and power companies as service integrators.

IV. CLOUD COMPUTING: In recent years, the technology of cloud computing has been widely applied in e-business, e-education and etc. Cloud

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computing platform is a set of Scalable large-scale data server clusters, it provide computing and storage services to customers. The cloud storage is a relatively basic and widely applied service which can provide users with stable, massive data storage space. A. Need of Cloud Computing: As an end user, cloud computing lets run software applications and access data from any place and time, and from any computer; without the need to ever install, upgrade, troubleshoot software applications physically on a local desktop or server. This is one of the most important elements of cloud computing, and why it has become so popular today. B. Platform as a Cloud Service: Necessary components of Energy Management System can be integrated together and can be provided to the user as a Platform. For building this platform cloud service can be used as an effective technology. This form of cloud computing delivers development environments as a service. Building own applications that run on the provider's infrastructure and are delivered to users via the Internet from the provider's servers. These services are constrained by the vendor's design and capabilities, so it is not possible to get complete freedom, but possible to get predictability and pre-integration.

International Journal of Computer Information Systems, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2011 This layer is perhaps most familiar to everyday Web users. The application services layer hosts applications that fit the SaaS model. These are applications that run in a cloud and are provided on demand as services to users. B. Platform services : This is the layer in which application infrastructure emerge as a set of services. This includes but is not limited to middleware as a service, messaging as a service, integration as a service, information as a service, connectivity as a service, and so on. The services here are intended to support applications. These applications might be running in the cloud, and they might be running in a more traditional enterprise data center. In order to achieve the scalability required within a cloud, the different services offered here are often virtualized. C. Infrastructure services : The bottom layer of the cloud is the infrastructure services layer. Here, we see a set of physical assets such as servers, network devices, and storage disks offered as provisioned services to consumers. The services here support application infrastructure -- regardless of whether that infrastructure is being provided via a cloud -- and many more consumers. As with platform services, virtualization is an often used method to provide the on-demand rationing of the resources. VI. PUBLIC, PRIVATE AND HYBRID CLOUD:

V.

ANATOMY OF CLOUD:

Fig.3. Cloud types Public clouds are cloud services provided by a third party (vendor). They exist beyond the company firewall, and they are fully hosted and managed by the cloud provider. Public clouds attempt to provide consumers with hassle-free IT elements. Whether it is software, application infrastructure,

Fig.2. Cloud anatomy A. Application services :

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or physical infrastructure, the cloud provider takes on the responsibilities of installation, management, provisioning, and maintenance. Customers are only charged for the resources they use, so under-utilization is eliminated. Private clouds are cloud services provided within the enterprise. These clouds exist within the company firewall and they are managed by the enterprise. Private clouds offer many of the same benefits that public clouds do with one major difference: the enterprise is in charge of setting up and maintaining the cloud. The difficulty and cost of establishing an internal cloud can sometimes be prohibitive. Hybrid clouds are a combination of

International Journal of Computer Information Systems, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2011 VIII. WHY CLOUD IS MORE APPLICABLE IN ENERGY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM THAN GRID:

a. Grid computing is better suited for organizations with large

amounts of data being requested by a small number of users (or few but large allocation requests), whereas cloud computing is better suited to environments where there are a large number of users requesting small amounts of data (or many but small allocation requests). b. Grids require batch job scheduling or sophisticated policies for allocating jobs, while clouds do not. Also, by their nature, clouds do not require as large an upfront investment, as the cloud provider is responsible for running and maintaining servers. c. If computational needs are small, or very large but only occasionally, or irregular/bursty in general, or unpredictable, or exhibiting fast/irregular growth, then I would say go for cloud computing because each of these patterns will either keep your data center idle at times, or not give you the economy of scale to amortize the investment in running a data center. IX. ISSUES REGARDING CLOUD: 1. Its not a good idea to put sensitive data on a public cloud," cautioned Myerson, as it's more susceptible to being hacked. 2. Interoperability can also be an issue with cloud computing. "For instance, if your company outsources its data to one cloud computing vendor, there may be problems changing over the applications [later on] to a different computing vendor due to proprietary APIs for exporting and importing data to a public cloud," she noted. X. FUTURE CONTROL CENTERS BASED ON CLOUD: Cloud application services or "Software as a Service (SaaS)" deliver software as a service over the Internet, eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer's own computers and simplifying maintenance and support. Network-based access to, and management of, commercially available (i.e., not custom) software Activities that are managed from central locations rather than at each customer's site, enabling customers to access applications remotely via the Web. Application delivery that typically is closer to a oneto-many model (single instance, multi-tenant architecture) than to a one-to-one model, including architecture, pricing, partnering, and management characteristics Centralized feature updating, which obviates the need for downloadable patches and upgrades.

public and private clouds. These clouds would typically be created by the enterprise, and management responsibilities would be split between the enterprise and public cloud provider. The hybrid cloud leverages services that are in both the public and private space. VII. SOA AND CLOUD COMPUTING Cloud computing can be seen as an extension of SOA past applications and into application and physical infrastructure. As enterprises and cloud providers look to provide cloud solutions, their basic goal will be to enable the enterprise IT infrastructure as a service. The lessons that have been learned in order to integrate and provide enterprise applications as discrete services should also be applied as the infrastructure layers are organized and provided as services. The application and physical infrastructure, much like applications in SOA, must be discoverable, manageable, and governable. Ideally, much like with SOA, open standards will evolve that dictate how the services are discovered, consumed, managed, and governed.

Fig.4. Cloud services

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International Journal of Computer Information Systems, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2011 X. ARCHITECHTURE:

Client Infrastructure or User Interface

iIn

M A N A G E M E N T

Applications

Common Services
Control Services The Cloud Center

Server

PC Cloud Storage

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XI. CONCLUSION: In this paper, it has reviewed the evolution of control center from its past to present. Conventional control centers had lot many disadvantages. After enabling Grid based technologies, presently control centers are decentralized, flexible, integrated and open. Present days control centers are using ICT technologies based on grid services. The focus of this paper has been on the technology and the closing of the technology gap. Different organization can share their resources on the cloud. Incorporating cloud computing with web services as building technology of future based control centers will offer tremendous opportunities. I have attempted to outline a development direction for future control centers utilizing cloud services architecture. XII. ACKNOWLEDGMENT I would like to say thanks to CD Kalyan , Honeywell Technology Solutions Lab for his constant help and inspiration. REFERENCES: [1] A. S. Tanenbaum and M. V. Steen, Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms. Upper Saddle River, NJ: PrenticeHall, 2002. [2] I. Foster, C. Kesselman, and S. Tuecke, The Anatomy of the Grid [Online]. Available: http://www.globus.org/alliance/publications/ papers/anatomy.pdf [3] ,M. Parashar and C. A. Lee, Eds., Special issue on grid computing, Proc. IEEE, vol. 93, no. 3, Mar. 2005. [4] ,I. Foster and C. Kesselman, Eds., The Grid: Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure, 2nd ed. New York: Elsevier, 2005. [5] X. P. Wu, Y. Zhang, and X. W. Wang, A new generation EMS, in IEEE Proc. PowerCon Int. Conf. 2002, vol. 1, pp. 190194. [6] X. B. Qiu and W. Wimmer, Applying object-orientation and component technology to architecture design of power system monitoring, in Proc. PowerCon International Conf. 2000, vol. 2, pp. 589594. [7] X. L. Li, M. Y. Gao, J. S. Liu, Z. H. Ding, and X. Z. Duan, A software architecture for integrative utility management

International Journal of Computer Information Systems, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2011 system, in Proc. IEEE Power Engineering Soc. Winter Meeting 2001, vol. 2, pp. 476480. [8] K. Kawata, T. Yamashita, Y. Takahata, and M. Ueda, A largescale distributed control system on multi-vendor platform, in Proc. IEEE T&D Conf. Exhibition: Asia Pacific Oct. 2002, vol. 1, pp. 3742. [9] X. L. Li, D. Y. Shi, Z. H. Ding, X. Z. Duan, M. Y. Gao, and Y. Z. He, Study on MAS architecture of EMS, in Chinese, Autom. Elect. Power Syst., vol. 25, pp. 3640, Jun. 2001. [10] Y. Q. Yan, W. C. Wu, B. M. Zhang, Z. N. Wang, and C. R. Liu, Preliminary research and implementation of soft-bus for EMS supporting component interface specification, in Chinese, Power Syst. Tech., vol. 28, pp. 1116, Oct. 2004. [11] G. P. Azevedo, B. Feijo, and M. Costa, Control centers evolve with agent technology, IEEE Comput. App. Power, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 4853, Jul. 2000. [12] S. Katayama, T. Tsuchiya, T. Tanaka, R. Tsukui, H. Yusa, and T. Otani, Distributed real-time computer network architecture: power systems information model coordinated with agent applications, in Proc. IEEE T&D Conf. Exhibition: Asia Pacific 2002, vol. 1, pp. 611. [13] Systinet Corp. , Web Services: A practical introduction, [Online]. Available: http://www.systinet.com
AUTHORS PROFILE

Shweta Saha is pursuing her Mtech degree from VIT University in Computer Science. She has done her BTech degree in Information Technology in 2008 from Haldia Institute of Technology

Dr S. Margret Anouncia ,is Professor & Divisional Leader of B.Tech. (CSE) in VIT University.

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