NERC Situational Awareness and
Monitoring Conference
Event Response Strategies
Carl Eng
Dominion Virginia Power
September 18, 2013
Event Response Strategies
Dominion Virginia Power employs a “defense in
depth” strategy to maintain situational
awareness and to mitigate risks should an
event cause our Energy Management System
(EMS) to go down.
Redundancy, diversity, and backup systems are
some of the solutions incorporated into a
design to provide our system operators with a
high degree of operational capability.
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RELIABILITY | ACCOUNTABILITY
Energy Management System
Redundant EMS Design:
• Primary Control Center:
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Primary and Backup Computers
Dual LAN Design
Dual Power Feeds with backup generators
Redundant infrastructure (water, etc.)
• Backup Facility:
 Separate EMS computer
 Diversity for infrastructure (power, telecom, etc.)
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RELIABILITY | ACCOUNTABILITY
Telecommunications
Redundant Telecommunications Design:
• Use of SONET technologies for internal telecommunications
network infrastructure.
• Leased TELCO facilities utilize separate “points of presence.”
Backup Systems:
• Vital telemetry is duplicated with an analog signal that can be
used independent of the EMS facilities.
• FUTURE - Considering the use of Phasor Measurement Unit
(PMU) data as a backup system for the EMS.
• 3-Phase Linear State Estimator – currently on EHV system
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RELIABILITY | ACCOUNTABILITY
PMU Data
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RELIABILITY | ACCOUNTABILITY
PMU Data – Phase Angle
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RELIABILITY | ACCOUNTABILITY
PMU Data - Trending
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RELIABILITY | ACCOUNTABILITY
Voice
Voice Communications Design:
• Multiple paths for wired voice telephone connections.
 PSTN
 Internal Telephone Network
 Direct Central Office Line
• Wireless
 Cellular Phones
 Digital Pagers
• Satellite Telephones
 Low Earth Orbit
 Geosynchronous Orbit
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RELIABILITY | ACCOUNTABILITY
Strategies
Leverage field resources:
• Rapid staffing of vital facilities when EMS
capabilities are lost
• Equipped with portable satellite phones
PJM Notifications:
• PJM Manual 1 requires notifications of PJM,
nuclear stations for certain data loss conditions
Backup Resources:
• Bug-Out-Bag (BOB)
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RELIABILITY | ACCOUNTABILITY
Redundancy
Data
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RELIABILITY | ACCOUNTABILITY
Redundancy
Voice
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RELIABILITY | ACCOUNTABILITY
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RELIABILITY | ACCOUNTABILITY