SCADA as a service approach for interoperability of micro-grid platforms

In the context of smart grid development, this paper considers the problem of interoperability of micro-grid platforms, particularly among research institutions. Various levels of interoperability are introduced with the respective requirements. The primary aim of the paper is to propose a suitable private hybrid cloud based SCADA architecture satisfying various necessities in the framework of interoperability of micro-grid platforms while maintaining security restriction conditions. Due to the limited time restriction of critical SCADA functions in the electrical grid (protection, real time control, etc.), only selected non-critical SCADA functions (back-up, data historian, etc.) are accessible to partners from the private cloud. The critical SCADA tasks functionality remains under control of local server, thus, a hybrid cloud architecture. Common Information Model (IEC 61970 and IEC 61968, CIM/XML/RDF) is proposed to be used as model for information exchange. The communication model is based on PaaS delivery model and OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) specifications are considered. OPC gateway is proposed as conversion between the old OPC Distributed Common Object Model (DCOM) protocol and the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) for cloud.