Application Performance Engineering Blog – Shunra Software

During the last couple of weeks I had the opportunity to meet with a couple of companies looking to develop applications for Smart Grid management. The newest trend in power distribution is to build systems to allow for ongoing monitoring of both consumption and generation of power by individual home users. This system would facilitate granular measurements of power utilization, even by individual appliances at home (Home Appliance Network) and at the same time, allow power generated by individual users – using solar panels or wind turbines – to be incorporated into the grid, while crediting the user for the power generated by the individual users.

While the technology is still in its infancy, several providers are adopting distinctive approaches such as RF transmitters/receivers to forward the information from the metering devices upstream to the utilities, and back. Others are choosing to deploy 3G technologies. All solutions have similarities, for example several or up to several thousands communicate upstream to concentrator units, currently being deployed in utility poles, with the electric or phone wires.  In turn, the concentrators communicate with a “front end processing” unit, that properly parses the information, scans it for malware or security threats and then assimilates the information in the utility Information Systems applications, such as billing, power demand management systems, outage control and others. The Utilities can in turn, send instructions to individual meters, containing differential pricing – based on electric demand in real time – or command to a particular appliance when to commence a cycle, for example, re-charge an electric car or a laundry load only when the electric demand is off-peak and there is enough surplus to generate capacity.

A key factor in the adoption of the technology is the incorporation of the Home Appliance Network, a mechanism that allows the manipulation of home appliances by incorporating command consoles into them, and assigning them unique identifiers. This is where IP V6 comes into play. All the elements on the Smart Grid networks will communicate using IP based technology and the need to have millions of individual entities will force the migration into IPV6.

So where does Shunra become part of the solution? Actually in almost every step of the life cycle. Every smart meter communicates upstream with a concentrator, and the concentrator conveys feedback and instructions to every meter, either over a wireless, 3G or RF network. In turn, concentrators exchange data with the utilities, via an MPLS network supplied by the utilities or contracted by them into a carrier. Every step of the communication chain can, and should be emulated in a lab by Shunra technology. At the same time, every major utility will have to construct a complete mock-up lab for testing, training and development purpose. Shunra will provide the perfect replica of the network environment and incorporate it into the scripting and testing tools to certify your applications.