In the recent past the smart grid has often been a synonym for a smart meter infrastructure but which actually often provides only a smart edge of the grid. The OpenNode project will especially focus on inner parts of the distribution grid, namely the smart Secondary Substation Nodes (SSN) as substantial component to monitor and control the distribution grid status. Based on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) major energy industry challenges are addressed by a network of embedded devices – the SSNs – capable of communicate to each other and contribute to the efficient exploitation of the energy resources.

The OpenNode approach

The OpenNode consortium has been established composed by 9 partners from 6 different European Countries, including European ICT leaders, European Consulting standard leaders and some of the greatest Utilities in Europe.

OpenNode takes also on board the results of two other projects from the European Community 7th Frame Program. These two projects are OPEN meter and ADDRESS:

OPEN meter (www.openmeter.com), which main objective is to specify a comprehensive set of open and public standards for AMI.

ADDRESS (www.addressfp7.org), whose target is to enable active demand as the active participation of small and commercial consumers in power system markets and provision of services to the different power system participants.

OpenNode will link those two projects in such a way that will let together with OPEN meter the technological architectures needed to achieve the results of ADDRESS. OPEN meter will provide the metering architecture and OpenNode the Smart Grid control and management subsystems through the SSN and the MW that will allow the distribution network to perform the ADDRESS vision.

Innovations and foresight

OpenNode reached almost the end of its second year. During the first twelve months, OpenNode’s general requirements and use cases were completed as well as the Middleware and SSN specification and detailed design, the communication architecture was also defined including the evaluation and selection of standards.

The second period of the project mainly focused in the hardware/software developments for the SSN Prototypes. Prototypes related to the two physical SSN and reference implementation of the Middleware have been developed and the virtual SSN specified. The objectives of the SSN prototype development are to develop prototypes that realize the use cases defined in the early stages of the project, and to develop prototypes paving the way towards the introduction of the standard IEC 61850 for communications and automation in substations.

Two main tests sites have been defined, a laboratory (Clamart, EDF) and a part of a grid (Madrid, IBERDROLA), through the coordination of contributions especially from the manufactures and test site responsible. The main objective was twofold. Firstly, to elaborate and analyze a list of system functionalities and Uses Cases that could be tested according to equipment technical development status and test side characteristics. Secondly, to gather information such as equipment availability, configurations and signals about both test filed locations, Clamart and real piece of Iberdrola network in Madrid.

In parallel to developments the project has detailed all the tests that are going to be run on the prototypes implemented by the consortium manufacturers in order to validate the functional capabilities and to demonstrate the customer and control system integration of the OpenNode architecture.