In this December 2011 paper presented at Grid Interop Forum 2011, Navigant experts demonstrate a vetted methodology for identifying areas of architectural modularity using two detailed architecture references:
- NISTIR Logical Reference Model – a work product of the NIST smart grid standards effort that establishes actors and interfaces in the smart grid
- NRECA’s Demonstration Architecture – a planned architecture for a federally funded smart grid demonstration project.
The design structure matrix methodology is applied with the intent to demonstrate how this approach can apply to defining smart grid architectures and to help identify architectural groupings that can lead to better modularization of smart grid systems and standards efforts.
This paper is intended to inform current and future smart grid architecture efforts and to help improve the organization by which smart grid systems and standards can be established. Navigant experts conclude that initial smart grid architectural efforts (as documented in the references, actual architectures may have other constraints such as backward compatibility) can be improved upon by identifying areas of modularity and organizing around them. The tools demonstrated can be best applied when the full dimensionality and scope of the problem is made explicit, but the demonstrations in this paper that use only publically available information also yield interesting findings.