[August 13, 2015]

SmartCloud Upgrades AI-Driven Situational Awareness for NERC

SmartCloud, Inc. announced today a major upgrade to its artificial intelligence driven Situational Awareness solution used by North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC (News - Alert)) for real-time monitoring of the North American bulk power system, which meets the transmission needs of over 334 million people. The upgrade incorporates the electric industry's Common Information Model (CIM) standard to simplify the integration of new data sources and knowledge-based AI models.

"We are very excited about the combination of CIM and our industrial AI technologies for enhancing the reliability of what we consider one of the world's most important and mission-critical Internet of Things systems - the bulk power grid for North America," said Kim Mayyasi, CEO of SmartCloud.

"This grid generates data in real time and at big data levels from sources across the continent, which can challenge an operator's ability to quickly detect, assess, and respond to situations of concern," continued Mayyasi. "As part of giving operators the context they need to interpret all this data, we model data properties and relationships using knowledge-based AI techniques built on Semantic Web standards. By using CIM to further define those properties and relationships, we've greatly simplified the ability to integrate and contextualize other CIM-based data sources. We've also made it much easier for other systems supporting CIM to make use of our solution."

SAFNR for Proactive Monitoring

Built on its Big Reasoning® Engine software platform, SmartCloud's solution is at the core of NERC's tool named SAFNR v2 (Situation Awareness for the FERC, NERC and Regional Entities, Version 2). The tool helps operators proactively monitor for and respond to conditions, such as extreme weather or equipment failures, that could impact the reliability of the bulk power system.

Deployed since 2012, SAFNR v2 monitors over 30,000 data points in real time from generation and transmission facilities across North America. SmartCloud's solution ingests and processes this data using artificial intelligence and big data techniques and then integrates it with operator displays. In addition to CIM, SmartCloud's upgrade suppors enhancements to the display interfaces, streamlines solution recoveries, and adds new data points.

Standards-based modeling of power grid with CIM

"Beyond speeding up data integration, the embracement of CIM within our solution makes it easier to add AI capabilities that further help operators manage situations in real time - capabilities such as predictive alerts, root-cause analysis, what-if simulations, and optimization," said Steven Fraleigh, SmartCloud's CTO.

CIM is a widely adopted electric utility standard for simplifying data exchange versus traditional one-to-one mappings of data sources. The standard applies semantic modeling to describe power system components and their relationships using a common set of vocabulary and definitions. For example a generating station might be defined by properties such as power output and geographical coordinates and by relationships such as ownership and physical connections to specific transmission lines. CIM also models other important industry data sources including equipment asset tracking, work scheduling, billing, and electricity markets.

"Because we model using an AI approach built on Semantic Web standards, we were able to very quickly upgrade our bulk power system model to be based on CIM," added Fraleigh. "We'll similarly be able to include any future changes to the CIM standard. We can also enable users to create on-the-fly queries and rules for their data using CIM-defined vocabulary and relationships. And because our AI knowledge bases can represent the connected relationships of a grid network, or the grid topology, CIM simplifies applying reasoning logic that determines the consequences of a broken connection - such as when a substation goes offline during an extreme weather event."

AI-driven data fusion

SmartCloud's Situational Awareness solution applies AI technologies to improve real-time fusion of power grid data with operator decision support tools such as geo-spatial displays, graphs, charts, and plots. For example with SAFNR v2 tens of thousands of AI software agents help ensure accurate and timely data by applying reasoning logic in real time to take into account issues of latencies, delays, corruptions, and duplications. The AI Agents then orchestrate synchronization of the data for integration with visualizations, historians, and other systems that enhance situational awareness.

To meet NERC's security requirements, SmartCloud's solution is Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) compatible, is hosted at a secure SSAE 16 datacenter, and communicates with NERC and regional entities via Inter-Control Center Communications Protocol (ICCP).

About NERC

NERC is a not-for-profit international regulatory authority whose mission is to assure the reliability of the bulk power system in North America. NERC develops and enforces Reliability Standards; annually assesses seasonal and long-term reliability; monitors the bulk power system through system awareness; and educates, trains, and certifies industry personnel. NERC operates under the oversight of the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Canadian government.

About SmartCloud

Founded in 2009, SmartCloud builds industrial-strength artificial intelligence solutions that improve real-time decision making and automated actions in operational infrastructures, such as for utility grids, process manufacturing, oil and gas, government, commerce, and Internet of Thing systems. The company builds and deploys solutions on its patented Big Reasoning Engine software platform, which merges the reasoning and analysis power of artificial intelligence, the real-time control and security of industrial automation, and the performance of Big Data and cloud computing.

In addition to NERC, SmartCloud's customers include Con Edison, Constellation Energy, CPower, Demand Response Partners, EnerNOC, ERCOT, ISO New England, JEA, Mosaic Company, NYISO, NYSERDA, and Rockwell Automation.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150813005045/en/

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