Can digital forensic science be the key to energy efficiency and independence?

It’s Monday, February 25th and I’m (hypothetically) traveling on business to Miami, FL. I’m staying in this great hotel. The TV’s got a million different channels, there’s an integrated video game, DVD player and free internet connection. Work and play via one remote control – can life get any better? Well it apparently did, pop on the TV and surf the channels to one of my favorite TV shows – CSI Miami http://www.cbs.com/primetime/csi_miami/ . Gotta love these shows; life tragedies unfold before your eyes via a succession of nearly incomprehensible circumstances. Enter a handful of smart people, some killer forensic science and woola; the plot unfolds – bad guys go to jail, grieving families find peace; and good guys start rehearsing for next-weeks’ installment. According to Wikipedia digital forensic science is defined as “… the application of proven scientific methods and techniques in order to recover data from electronic / digital media. DF specialist work in the field as well as in the lab”. Check out the Wikipedia entry on forensics – some great history here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensics ...


So what’s the link with energy?
Well, on Tuesday, February 26th (the morning after my hypothetical trip to Miami) at about 1:00pm a minor glitch in Florida’s electrical grid somehow triggered a chain reaction (not hypothetically) that caused a nuclear plant to shut down and briefly cut power in patches from Daytona Beach through the Florida Keys. Up to 3 million people — about a fifth of Florida’s population — lost power at various points during the afternoon, though there were no safety concerns at the nuclear plant. An equipment malfunction in a substation near Miami disabled two power distribution lines between Miami and Daytona Beach, and in response, Florida Power & Light’s Turkey Point nuclear plant south of Miami stopped operating around 1 p.m.. That’s what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Kenneth Clark said (according to Reuters http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNews/idUSN2924017620080229 ….). CNN covered the story three days later - http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/29/florida.outage/index.html as follows: preliminary results of an investigation show that Tuesday's massive power outage in Florida was caused by human error, Florida Power and Light President Armando Olivera said Friday. A field engineer was diagnosing a switch that had malfunctioned at FPL's Flagami substation in west Miami. Without authorization, the engineer disabled two levels of relay protection, Olivera said. "This was done contrary to FPL's standard procedures and established practices," he said. Standard procedures do not allow the simultaneous removal of both levels of protection. "We don't know why the employee took it upon himself to disable both sets of relays," he added. A fault occurred during the diagnostic process, and because both levels of relay protection had been removed, the fault caused an outage ultimately affecting 26 transmission lines and 38 substations, Olivera said. One of the substations affected serves three of the generation units at Turkey Point -- a natural gas unit and both of the plant's nuclear units. Both the nuclear units automatically shut down due to an under-voltage condition, he said. Also affected were two other generation plants in FPL's system. The total impact to the system was a loss of 3,400 megawatts of generating capacity. "The employee realized something had gone wrong, but I think it's fair to say the employee didn't recognize the extent or magnitude of the problem," Olivera said. The affected region ranged from Miami to Tampa, through Orlando and east to Brevard County, home to Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center.


So what can be done about this?
A lot. First the skills issues. Human error is not an excuse; it’s actually the most avoidable circumstance. How? Training and instantaneous access to skills and proper oversight. At what cost? Low cost – through private broadband wireless mobile services which help “virtualize” people and assets so the right skills and oversight can virtually be transported to the problem regardless of time or location.

Second, when will our nation’s utilities and oil and gas companies invest in information technologies that bridge the gap between policy and practice? FPL claims an equipment malfunction in a substation near Miami disabled two power distribution lines after the engineer disabled two levels of relay protection; which “was done contrary to FPL's standard procedures and established practices". Great – they had the right standardized procedures and practices; they just didn’t have the safeguards and methods to enforce them – it’s like building a multi-lane super highway and not budgeting for police, service lanes and towing! Again, broadband wireless services to the rescue. Whether machine-to-machine communications to enable “self-healing” of the grid; or person-to-person communications to provide oversight and redundant coverage of critical procedures; or machine-to-person communications to issue alerts to other parties so that they understand that policies and procedures are deviating from the norm – automatically; or person-to-machine communications to proactively intervene and stop the non-compliant actions from causing the grid to collapse! Wireless networks cover the full range of capability needed by today’s electric utilities to not only recover faster from such events but to avoid them all together.

Detecting, diagnosing and repairing electric grid problems requires a new breed of digital forensics – broadband wireless networking. Preventing problems requires the same communications infrastructure, policies and procedures as responding to them. In addition that same communication infrastructure can help optimize the deployment of people and assets; weed out redundancies and lay the foundation for all kinds of automation and new levels of security. Optimizing the grid; and making the people who support it more efficient and capable saves time and money. Our money and time as well as the utilities’!

This article is the first in a series; you’ll be hearing more from our management team and we hope to be hearing from you as well!

Check out how the press covered the FPL event….

1) http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNews/idUSN2924017620080229
2) http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1717878,00.html
3) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aZNsQWFCrd44&refer=us
4) http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/29/florida.outage/
5) http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/03/last_weeks_flor.html
6) http://www.energycentral.com/centers/energybiz/ebi_detail.cfm?id=474
7) http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/29/florida.outage/index.html

Ed Solar; CEO, Arcadian Networks ed.solar@arcadiannetworks.com