Windows Azure Real Case: Invensys Operations Management-Company uses Windows Azure AppFabric to realize a dynamic energy-efficient smart grid

Invensys Operations Management decided to make it easier for small American power companies and less money to participate in the smart grid (the U.S. government-supported energy modernisation program). Power companies need high-performance, low-cost ways to release real-time electricity data to users, making it easier for users to spend their first time making decisions. Invensys has created a smart grid communications platform using service bus and access control service, which are part of the Windows Azure platform. The Smart Grid communication platform allows power companies to immediately adopt smart grid services at an affordable price. Such services can help power companies to use energy more rationally to save money. Invensys has developed pilot solutions within three months as part of a programme to increase revenue through the sale of products and services compatible with smart grids.

If homeowners have watt-hour meters on the kitchen wall, not outside the house, and show how much electricity each device uses, and what they spend, they can make smarter use decisions. If industrial enterprises can also obtain the electricity use information in real time, as well as the matching tariff information, they can detect and adjust the power consumption dynamically. Even better, if their electrical devices have more intelligent control, such as shutting down or reducing energy use, automatically load-balance when electricity is highest.

This is the idea behind the smart grid, and the concept of saving electricity and distribution has been discussed for years in the power industry. These concepts were finally supported when Congress passed a bill on smart grid technology in 2007. The act includes smart energy metering, dynamic optimization of power grid operations, and standards for communication and synergy between electrical appliances, equipment and power infrastructure. The ultimate goal of this bill is to maximize the use of domestic energy, rather than relying on foreign energy to protect national security.

In order to achieve the results of smart Grid scheme, many technical problems must be overcome. Power companies need to upgrade and expand the country's power infrastructure to provide reliable and safe power sources, including coal, water, oil, wind and solar power.

They must also address how to publish continuously changing tariff data near real-time to large numbers of users using existing network infrastructures within a wide geographic area.

The U.S. government has developed and enforced a standard format for electricity price data. When electricity from the regional transmission operators to the retail market aggregators, to local power companies, eventually to residents, commercial or industrial users, through such a long-distance supply chain, all adopt a unified electricity price model. However, there is no common, scalable, and affordable communication infrastructure to deliver the data on the supply chain.

"Everything we touch is based on price-the higher the price, the less we use." David Hardin said that Invensys Operations Management, the manufacturer of process control equipment for smart grid applications, was the lead engineer. "The method is to provide people with tariff information in real time, so that they can adjust their usage patterns." "

Invensys Operations Management is working to make real-time grids a reality. It is a leading provider of information in automation and it, systems, software, services and global manufacturing and basic industries. Headquartered in Plano, Texas, 40,000 users worldwide, more than 200,000 factories and equipment use their solutions. The company has about 9,000 employees, a subsidiary of Invensys, headquartered in London. Invensys production industry and railway control system.

Invensys has already provided many power company process Control and automation products and services, and hopes to help smaller power companies to better detect the operation of their electricity grids and be able to actively join the smart grid solution. Of the 3,100 power companies in the United States, the biggest companies have modern data centers, but most of them do not. They are local government power companies or cooperatives and do not have the resources to manage smart grid services.

"Making smart grids a reality requires power companies to have a strong computing capacity to receive, compute, and broadcast tariff data." "We want to help these smaller power companies immediately get involved in the smart grid solution, not after a few years or a lot of capital investment," Hardin said. "

As a Microsoft®global independent Software Vendor,invensys learned Microsoft's Windows Azuretm platform in 2008, it is a "cloud" service platform hosted by Microsoft Data Center, providing development, Computing, storage and communications services to create an extensible, Pay-as-you-go mode of Internet service.

Invensys is immediately fascinated by Service bus characteristics, which can be used as a mechanism to solve the communication problems of smart grids. "We evaluated Amazon EC2 and Google Cloud products, but couldn't compare with service bus," Hardin said, "the functionality, synergy and scalability of the communications infrastructure needed for large-scale smart grid applications are available." Service Bus and Access Control Service are services that are not in other cloud scenarios. "

Service bus is easy to connect to applications via the Internet. Services registered with service bus can be found and accessed in almost any network topology.

Access Control Service provides authorization services for application connections on the Internet. When integrated with standards-based authentication providers, it provides an easy way to control Web applications and services. Authorization decisions can be drawn from the application and placed in a set of rules that transform the incoming security declaration into a declaration that the application understands. The concept of service bus middleware-integrating application services through service-oriented architectural patterns-has been around for years in the power industry. When upgrading the information technology infrastructure to integrate new smart grid functions, power companies generally use the Enterprise service bus. The Enterprise Service Bus provides information and communication "glue", which allows a service to discover and efficiently use other services in the directory or registry structure.

The Enterprise service Bus can send and receive data with low latency and has integrated access security when it is only applicable to the private network of interconnected systems within the enterprise boundary. Smart grids require a communications infrastructure that delivers high-performance notifications on a global scale.

and service bus can do this very well. "The nature of Service bus is the Enterprise Services network within the Internet," Hardin said. "It can be accessed extensively and securely, by service, and on demand." "

Invensys uses service bus and Access Control service and works closely with the Microsoft Developer and Platform Evangelism community to create a communications platform for building smart grid affinity products. The development took only 3 months.

The channel based on Windows®communication Foundation can publish and subscribe connectivity through a URL based directory structure. This technology, combined with access control Service, provides an extensible infrastructure for technical support for the safe delivery of dynamic tariff information, with a minimum of 5 minutes of fee updates.

"Service bus solves some big problems. "Using notification technology, you have to worry about incoming ports being monitored by firewalls," Hardin said. At the same time, for some IP addresses, you must use the network address Translation station to transfer to these devices.  These obstacles bring difficulty to communication between machines. Service bus solves these problems for us, and we don't have to worry about being able to send information by shutting down the incoming port. "

Invensys uses the Microsoft Silverlighttm browser plugin to build a graphical user interface to interact with smart grid applications. Client applications and power companies exchange tariff and usage data through service bus, while Silverlight based applications display graphical data.

In the smart grid pilot scheme, Invensys shows several usage scenarios. (Figure 1). One, a power company sends real-time tariff data to users in different geographical areas and tariff areas every 5 minutes. Client applications running at home or in the company receive tariff information through Service bus. Users will be able to shut down some electrical equipment during peak power periods. Local power companies can also create business intelligence applications, provide them with real-time billing and usage information flow, and develop better distribution options for power supply, new energy and new equipment.

Figure 1. Invensys Smart Grid pilot scheme uses service bus to transmit energy tariff data

In another scenario, a vacation user could log on to the Home energy portal, build and host the Windows Azure platform by Silverlight, and discover that he forgot to turn off the air conditioner. He can shut down these electrical equipment remotely. A certain instruction is delivered on the Service bus, and the user can immediately see that his expenses are reduced.

In another scenario, a factory operator can save a lot of money by adjusting the use of equipment to a low time period. For example, carmakers can switch between sheet-stamping pressure and assembly time to save electricity.

By using service bus and access control Service,invensys Operations Management can quickly build a smart Grid pilot program that provides a viable and affordable smart grid service for smaller power companies. Power companies do not need to build their own data center infrastructure to support the transmission of smart grid communications, and users can receive real-time information to help them develop smarter energy consumption habits.

"Service Bus provides the security, synergy and performance required for large smart grid applications, and costs far less than the cost of building data centers." "It provides a valuable solution to speed up the realization of smart grid technology, because it delivers tariffs and demand response information to a large number of users on the internet," Hardin said. "

Service Bus has a high scalability, and its price is reasonable. It can expand or reduce the scale on demand--david Hardin, Invensys Operations Management Supervisor Engineer

The power industry is often very conservative, Hardin said, and the grid is the biggest and most valuable asset. "We offer Service bus based solutions for small power companies without expensive data center investments, enabling them to develop in a simple and low-cost manner with the help of energy-saving technologies," he said.

The Invensys communication platform provides an efficient way for power companies to improve the energy consumption habits of millions of users. Some power companies now use radios to send simple signals to homes or companies to control thermostats or air-conditioning.

"By using the Invensys Smart Grid pilot platform, power companies can send richer information to dynamically adjust their usage based on frequently changing energy prices," he said. "We want to create a collaborative, market-oriented environment that allows power companies to send rich information to enable users to make smarter choices," Hardin said. Conversely, power companies receive real-time user data that helps them achieve variable load metering. With real-time information, power companies can change electricity tariffs dynamically based on demand for electricity. "

Using service bus as a communication expressway, power companies using the Invensys program can easily expand their smart grid infrastructure to meet changing needs. "Service Bus has a high scalability, and its price is reasonable." It can expand or shrink the scale freely on demand. "Without the need to deploy the physical infrastructure of the cloud, not to worry about their depreciation, power companies can enhance functionality on demand and only pay for communications transmissions," Hardin said. "

Invensys calculates that power companies use service bus to provide services to 100,000 of users, and only spend u.s.$18,930 per year, the same for 1 million users per year only $189,300. It costs very little compared to building and supporting high availability data centers. For ease of comparison, small data centers cost $500,000 to $ millions of a year, plus 50% maintenance costs.

Invensys mentions that using service bus and access control service not only lowers the cost of development, it makes the project possible at the outset. "Without service buses, we may not be able to complete this project," Hardin said, "Building an internet-based service bus with the same functionality and performance as a development challenge and costing millions of of dollars." "

With the development of the smart grid market, Invensys can sell the process automation system, real-time information system, can let the power enterprise and intelligent equipment in the customer's position to connect, and in the supply chain transmission tariff information integrated equipment.

"Selling Smart grid affinity products will open up a new market for automated systems with smart grid functions," Hardin said. "We cannot accurately estimate the size of the market, but it must be an objective market." "

This article is translated from: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000007194