IEEE Utility Communications Architecture (UCA) applies mainstream standard Ethernet by Karlheinz Schwarz (02/00) Abstract The Utility Communications Architecture (UCATM) is a standards-based approach to utility communications which provides for wide scale integration at reduced costs, and which solves many of the most pressing communications problems for today's utilities. The UCA is designed to apply across all of the functional areas within the electric, gas, and water utilities. These functional areas include customer interface, distribution, transmission power plant, control center, and corporate information systems. The UCA includes detailed object models, which defines the tag, format, representation, and the meaning of utility data. This modeling effort goes far beyond the scope of any other utility communications approach, and provides for an unprecedented level of multi-vendor interoperability applicable in most industries. 1. Introduction Worldwide, electric utility deregulation is expanding and creating demands to integrate, consolidate and disseminate information quickly and accurately between and within utilities. Utilities spend an ever-increasing amount - estimated $2 billion to $5 billion dollars a year in the USA only - for voice and data communications. There are already strong pressures to find ways of reducing operating costs to improve the utility earnings. In response to this need, IEEE has published a complete set of communication protocols. The international utility industry, comprising Electric, Gas, and Water utilities, is a key participant in the development and use of IEEE standards, along with the manufacturers of equipment conforming to the developed standards. These utilities rely heavily on standards in many areas incuding: electrical, mechanical, computers hardware, and computer software. Several years ago, the members of both IEEE and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI, Palo Alto, USA) identified the need to understand and properly implement open communication architectures. This need arose from the rapid expansion of interconnection technologies and the consequent demand for better exchange of information between various elements of the power delivery system, the utility's customer service and support staffs, and their customers. In their role as research and development arm of the international electric utility industry, EPRI funded a research and development effort to create the Utility Communications Architecture (UCA). ISO, IEEE, and other related communication standards (e.g., 10/100 Mbit/s Ethernet, ISDN, MMS – ISO 9506) were assembled to define UCA which its member utilities can use in meeting their communications needs. EPRI developed an assessment of functional and communications needs for the industry by area, and developed a methodology to map these needs to established and emerging standards developed by organization such as the IEEE. The result is a specification that points to standards that could be used to accomplish work at a utility in an 'open' fashion. Since the standards comprising UCA come from many areas such as the electric industry, the gas industry, the water industry, the communications industry, and the computer industry, EPRI believed that an IEEE Standards Coordinating Committee (SCC) is the best vehicle to facilitate coordination among all of these groups. Therefore, IEEE set up a new IEEE SCC, the SCC 36 (Utility Communications Architecture, UCA) whose charter is to coordinate the on-going work of refining and expanding the UCA communications protocols, and to ensure that these protocols are developed and/or accepted as international standards through the IEEE, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and other standards organizations as appropriate. The SCC 36 has unanimously decided to publish the UCA Version 2 specification as IEEE Technical Report (IEEE TR 1550) in July 1999. 2. ... download complete pdf-File (65 Kb)

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