Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L) has selected Siemens Energy to provide a smart grid demonstration project. Partial funding for the project is from the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act's Smart Grid Investment Grant Demonstration Project programme.
Siemens’ scope of the project includes Siemens Spectrum Power distribution management system (DMS) to coordinate the Midtown substation, Siemens Smart Substation Controller and control of all intelligent distribution field equipment.
KCP&L’s smart grid demonstration project consists of four main components: distribution network automation, distribution network management, distributed energy resource and demand response management, and advanced metering infrastructure and meter data management.
The combination of functions will provide the basis, which will help manage the KCP&L Green Impact Zone in this project. The systems will be integrated with existing systems at KCP&L, functioning as an integral part of the KCP&L enterprise. As a whole, the programme will verify a range of standard modeling and information exchange protocols necessary to implement a functional and secure intelligent grid. The project will define, validate and verify the necessary parameters and potential solution adjustments for KCP&L to plan and implement a system-wide rollout of the successful technologies and processes.
Ed Matthews, director of smart grid at KCP&L, said: “Siemens’ technology will help KCP&L enhance service for the entire Kansas City Midtown area through improved reliability, reduced energy delivery costs, more efficient energy consumption, improved carbon footprint and enhanced information flow.
“KCP&L believes this project will serve as a blueprint for future Smart Grid implementation and will accelerate a realization that the ‘utility of the future’ safely delivers reliable electricity with greater efficiency, reduced costs and improved environmental performance.”
KCP&L will invest approximately $48.1m and deliver benefits to about 14,000 customers in the Green Impact Zone area.
The Spectrum Power distribution management system and Smart Substation Controllers provide the operational backbone of the system supporting levels of automation on the feeders, complex and automated feeder reconfiguration decisions and integrated supervision with the control centers.
The DMS serves as the primary point of integration for the facilities, consumer, electrical system, load, distributed energy resource and real-time substation and feeder information. It includes outage management, distribution supervisory control and data acquisition, distribution network analysis and integration with KCP&L’s existing mobile workforce management system, geographic information system and other supporting systems.
The Smart Substation controller establishes an intelligent substation information technology infrastructure with the ability to make feeder and substation reconfiguration decisions, control field equipment, verify operations, track local grid capacity and coordinate with the control center.
Mike Edmonds, vice president and general manager of power distribution energy automation business at Siemens Energy, said: “Siemens is pleased to take a leadership role in the development and implementation of KCP&L’s Smart Grid demonstration project.
“The approach is focused on increasing automation to improve grid reliability and increase controllability, while setting the stage for the integration of alternative energy sources and enhancing the opportunities for demand response.”