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Ellicott City, MD, Jan. 11, 2008 -- Newton-Evans Research Co. formally commenced its tenth study of global trends and plans for electric power operational control systems, impacted by a barrage of new legislation, compliance requirements, smart grid developments and information security concerns. The 2008 study will include findings from more than 200 North American power utilities and 100-plus international utilities from 50 or more countries. Together, the results are expected to provide insight from utilities serving more than one-third of the world's electricity consumers.
The study of mission critical, real-time electric utility operational systems including energy management, supervisory control, and distribution network management will result in the publication of four volumes of research and planning information of importance to utilities, systems integrators and participants in smart grid developments.
A few of the highlights of the 2005-2007 study had included these observations:
* Outage management -- About thirty percent of the international utilities surveyed in late 2005 had implemented a separate outage management system (OMS). About 25 percent of the group planned to implement OMS as a separate system from SCADA/EMS by year-end 2007. The largest international utilities were more likely to have already implemented an OMS than were their smaller counterparts. European and Asia-Pacific regional utilities were more likely to have implemented an OMS than were counterparts in other world regions. Newton-Evans anticipates a significant increase in OMS use to be reported in the 2008 study.
* Generation management -- Generation management systems (GMS) were also experiencing an increased level of activity by year-end 2005, at least among those vertically integrated domestic North American utilities serving more than one half million customers. Most others (75 percent) were continuing to rely on automatic generation control (AGC) applications resident on their distribution SCADA systems for linking to power plant-based control systems (DCS's) or related power supply resources. Internationally, only a handful of participating utilities indicated use of, or plans for, a separate GMS.
* Linkages to external systems -- Linkage to other utility enterprise systems continued to be on the increase on a global scale; despite cyber security concerns. For many sites, the key to remaining secure seemed to be either: (a) the restricted provision of non-real-time access via periodic downloads to authorized requestors or (b) indirect access to and from the control system via historian files. Newton-Evans anticipates some changes in priorities this year, with a likelihood that many U.S. utilities will be implementing a NERC compliance reporting system over the 2008-2010 period.
* Overall spending outlook for control systems -- Overall spending for SCADA and EMS systems sold to the world community of electric utilities and independent transmission systems operators during January 2005-2007 reached more than $1.5 billion, based on Newton-Evans interim findings and data provided by major suppliers. With the more recent enactment of smart grid legislation and various compliance reporting requirements for security and reliability concerns occurring on an international basis, the research firm anticipates moderate growth in spending outlook for these and related power operations and engineering applications.
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