Application of information system technologies to power control centers in a liberalized environment

This paper describes the new control centers that are incorporated with information system technologies to handle precise security margins on a wide level and secure information exchange between system operators and other actors emerging in the liberalized electric power supply environment in progress. To further realize the system stress analysis by high-speed processing, symmetric multi processor (SMP) servers are adopted through cost-effective performance from the standpoint of investment protection. The performance improvements and observations are shown with processing time measurements according to the peculiarity of the power system analysis software packages embedded in the client-server-based energy management system (EMS). To cope with malicious intrusions into the cyber space through data links with outside information systems, an information exchange method using tough Internet protocol (IP) separation between information system and control system portions is also presented using a practical example, with cyber security strictly maintained among the other internal information systems in an electric power utility. (c) 2006 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.