A middleware for context-aware integration of power system software

Abstract

Supervisory computer systems are crucial for electric utilities to monitor the performance of the power system, analyzing equipment safety and reliability, and helping system operators understand what is happening throughout the power network. Some of those systems need to be integrated in order to support the routine operations. In most cases, however, such integration is not automatic, requiring visual access to information displayed on different screens, inference about equipment status, retyping of common data between systems, and others. This study analyzed data from a large electrical power transmission company, and found that a significant number of maintenance requests, for example, are canceled due to typing errors or inconsistencies caused by the lack of context information. This paper presents the architecture of a context-aware middleware and a prototype implementation that allows the integration between a supervisory control and data acquisition system (SCADA), which monitors the power network in real time, and other power-system software applications. It is shown that the use of context awareness has enabled the handling of information in an integrated and flexible manner, helping users make consistent decisions in the planning and supervision of a power system without having to access different screens of the software applications involved.