Florida Power and Light - Commercial Industrial Load Control System
Situation
Florida Power & Light (FPL) is among the largest and fastest-growing electric utilities in the United States with more than 4.3 million customer accounts and a fleet of 11 power plants or generating units. FPL is committed to providing its customers with reliable and cost-effective electric service.
FPL has responded to federal deregulation initiatives with continued restructuring and cost reduction efforts including new ways to do business; streamlined operations and lowering costs; and improved customer service.
Critical Issue
A reliable Load Management System (LMS) is required to reduce increased peak capacity. Demand-Side Management (DSM) and load control, in particular, allow FPL to obtain an optimum balance of centralized and decentralized energy technologies while integrating them throughout the service territory. It allows FPL to establish a reliable and predictable supply of power to its customers, based on thorough knowledge of their characteristics and needs.
Modus Operandi initially developed the Commercial Industrial Load Control System (CILC) to manage devices that are installed remotely at participating customer locations. This allowed FPL to shut down or control the power at all of these sites to reduce the load on the power grid during times of high demand. However, they did not have a way to shut down or control only a specific portion or region due to unique constraints without cancelling the whole load control system. Modus Operandi was selected to modernize FPL’s CILC system and processes.
Reasons
The CILC replaced the manual process that FPL managers used to develop a central plan of the power output by aggregating weekly declarations of expected plant capabilities into daily capabilities. But, the process of canceling or completing a load control event would not release the participating devices until their data logs were recovered. This could take hours during which technically available devices were not immediately returned back into service and resulted in lost revenue and dissatisfied customers.
Vision
The primary objective of the FPL program was to defer the construction of power plants through the reduction of peak demand. The ability to reduce peak demand, when needed, greatly increases system reliability. FPL needed an automated system to accomplish demand response without having to involve the customer each time. Originally, the load control system was set up to control all of the sites at the same time, but later it was realized that an option to control a specific portion or region was needed.
The vision was to make core processes more efficient by managing time consuming history log retrieval separately from time critical business processes, thus allowing for a more responsive system. Enhancements to the interface would allow users to create a maintenance load control schedule on a group of current customers and saving time when they needed to run tests on an increasing number of new customers. By modernizing the CILC system and processes, FPL would assure the availability of the maximum amount of megawatts of controllable power, keep customers satisfied and save significant amounts of money.
MO Provided
Modus Operandi developed a wireless web-based LMS load control system called the Commercial Industrial Load Control (CILC) deployed at a large FPL utility with 550 commercial load control customers who contribute a minimum of 200 megawatts each and have enabled FPL to defer building a new power plant.
The LMS has an optional Load Control Interface box (LCI) that provides notification of direct load control at the customer facility. Communication between the LCI and the LMS server is via wireless web (CDPD/CDMA) using a network service provider. All LMS user interfaces are through a web browser, which offers a secure yet flexible mechanism for users to exercise their various roles.
To make the CILC more efficient, Modus Operandi split the system’s history log retrieval process from load control shutdown processes. Error reporting of history log retrieval is now separate from critical load control messaging errors. This allows for a more accurate picture of what mission critical commands failed during scheduled maintenance tests.
A reporting capability was added to allow the analyst user to search for and view all the information from a load control event all at once, along with a printer friendly version of the report view. New data items, functions and flexibility were added to existing panels to better fit individual user’s business needs. A power system operator can now create a load control test schedule for more than one customer at a time, which will save them from having to repeat the same data entry steps for each customer maintenance schedule. The modernized system now divides the whole power grid schedule by regional area. This allows FPL more flexibility should only a sub set of the scheduled system require a modification.
Results
The CILC project allows customers to save up to 20 percent on their electricity bills; reduces peak demand and associated high-priced, on-peak, energy costs; and reduces need for more power plants and foreign oil. FPL will typically get 400 to 450 megawatts reduction to peak demand and continue to assure extremely high reliability.
Modus Operandi successfully achieved FPL’s objective of information technology modernization. Recent enhancements provide for an even more efficient, yet flexible system that better fits the different user’s business needs. Now, the analyst can view and filter the report data they need in minutes rather than hours. Their new annual maintenance schedule process saves several minutes in creating each customer schedule with more than 500 devices and adding new ones every day. All in all, this new reporting capability provides a complete picture of past load control events; reduces many man hours of tedious work; and helps provide customers with reliable and cost-effective electric service.
