Dispatch on or off of customer‐owned generation units to better match system needs
“IP Addressable” electric meters for customers allowing two‐way communication between the electric meter and the utility. This will enable the interchange of unique pricing, voltage, and power quality information on a meter‐by‐meter basis.
The utility will be able to remotely turn electric service on or off, assuming smart meters have this capability. Turning off a meter for non‐payment, or if an electrical fault is sensed within the building electric service, would be possible.
The smart meter may be able to generate “alerts” to customers, or real‐time electric load information that will enable building load management systems to automatically schedule non‐critical equipment operations such as shutting down, or delayed starting of air conditioning compressors, resulting in more effective peak shaving.
There are major cost hurdles to be overcome in the design, planning, and implementation of any “smart grid.” To the extent that the federal government has endorsed its development and provided some funding, it is starting to take shape. Exactly what this will mean for mission critical facilities remains to be seen, but it is likely that it will, at a minimum, allow greater flexibility in installing on‐site power generating devices and facilitate the shifting of discretionary loads from peak periods to off‐peak periods that have lower electric rates.
2.8 Conclusion
It is important to address the physical and cyber security needs of critical infrastructures, including systems, facilities, and assets. Security requirements may include capabilities to prevent and protect against both physical and digital intrusion, hazards, threats, and incidents, and to expeditiously recover and reconstitute critical services. Personnel should be trained and made aware of security risks and consequences, ensuring that sensitive information will not be leaked and lead to a security breach.
A sensible and cost‐effective security approach can provide a protection level achieved through design, construction, and operation that mitigates adverse impact to systems, facilities, and assets. This can include vulnerability and risk assessment methodologies that identify prevention, protection, monitoring, detection, and sensor systems to be deployed in the design. Also, less frequent, but greater consequence risks must be taken into consideration. No longer are accidents, the only risks to be expected, but deliberate attacks must be accounted for as well.
The increased use of advanced information technology coupled with the prevalence of hacking and unauthorized access to electronic networks requires physical security to be complemented by cyber security considerations. Hacking techniques are becoming more sophisticated, and before enabling remote access for monitoring and/or control of critical infrastructure systems, cyber security protection must be assured. Major damage can be done remotely, and the greatest effort should be made to prevent illicit access to critical networks.
For mission critical facilities, this cements the need for the design of backup power systems – including UPS, generators, transfer switches, etc. – to be on par with the challenges facing us as today’s digital society evolves and necessitates the digitalization of the power grid. The importance of ongoing and technical maintenance programs, coupled with strong training and education, should also be stressed. Without these elements, no business recovery plan will be successful.
2.9 Energy Security and Its Effect on Business Resiliency ‐ Questions to Consider
Below is a list of questions that you may wish to ask yourself about the mission critical infrastructure you are supporting. Your answers to these questions should help to shed some light on areas where you can improve your operations.
Power Utilities
1 Do you have a working and ongoing relationship with your electric power utility?
2 Do you know who in your organization currently has a relationship with your electric power utility – i.e., facilities management or accounts payable?
3 Do you understand your electric power utility’s “Electric Service Priority” (ESP) protocols?
4 Do you understand your electric power utility’s restoration plan?
5 Are you involved with your electric power utility’s crisis management/disaster recovery tests?
6 Have you identified regulatory guidelines or business continuity requirements that necessitate planning with your electric power utility?
7 What is the relationship between the regional source power grid and the local distribution systems?
8 What are the redundancies and the related recovery capacity for both the source grid and local distribution networks?
9 What is the process of restoration for source grid outages?
10 What is the process of restoration for local network distribution outages?
11 How many network areas are there in your city?
12 What are the inter‐relationships between each network segment and the source feeds?
13 Does your infrastructure meet basic standard contingency requirements for route grid design?
14 What are the recovery time objectives for restoring impacted operations in any given area?
15 What are recovery time objectives for restoring impacted operations in any given network?
16 What are the restoration priorities to customers – both business and residential?
17 What are the criteria for rating in terms of service restoration?
18 Where does your industry rank in the priority restoration scheme?
19 How do you currently inform clients of a service interruption and the estimated time for restoration?
20 What are the types of service disruptions, planned or unplanned, that your location could possibly experience?
21 Could you provide a list of outages, type of outage and length of disruption that have affected your location during the last 12 months?
22 What are the Reliability Indices and who uses them?
23 During an outage, would you be willing to pass along information regarding the scope of interruptions to a central industry source, e.g., an industry business continuity command center?
24 Are the local and regional power utilities cooperating in terms of providing emergency service? If so, in what way? If not, what are the concerns surrounding the lack of cooperation?
25 Would you be willing to provide schematics to select individuals and/or organizations on a non‐disclosure basis?
26 Could you share your lessons learned from the events of 9/11 and the Northeast outage of 8/14/03?
27 Are you familiar with the “Critical Infrastructure Assurance Guidelines for Municipal Governments” document written by the Washington Military Department Emergency Management Division? Is so, would you describe where (specify city) stands in regard to the guidelines set forth in that document?
28 Independent of the utility’s capability to restore power to its customers, can you summarize your internal business continuity plans, including preparedness for natural and manmade disasters (including but not limited to weather‐related events, pandemics, and terrorism)?
3 Mission Critical Engineering with an Overview of Green Technologies
“As a leader … your principal job is to create an operating environment where others can do great things.”
Richard Teerlink
3.1 Introduction