The openPDC is a complete set of applications for processing streaming time-series data in real-time. The name stands for "open source phasor data concentrator" and was originally designed for the concentration and management of real-time streaming synchrophasors. Due to the system's

modular design Modular design, or modularity in design, is a design principle that subdivides a system into smaller parts called ''modules'' (such as modular process skids), which can be independently created, modified, replaced, or exchanged with other modules ...

, the openPDC can be classified as a generic event stream processor.

History

The openPDC is based on the SuperPDC which was developed by the

Tennessee Valley Authority The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina ...

starting in 2004. The openPDC officially launched on October 7, 2009. The first stable release of the openPDC was made available on January 28, 2010. Then on February 23, 2010,

AREVA T&D Areva S.A. is a French multinational group specializing in nuclear power headquartered in Courbevoie, France. Before its 2016 corporate restructuring, Areva was majority-owned by the French state through the French Alternative Energies and Atom ...

announced that they would be providing commercial support for the openPDC. Finally, on April 1, 2010, the Grid Protection Alliance inherited development of the openPDC and entered into a contract with the

North American Electric Reliability Corporation The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) is a nonprofit corporation based in Atlanta, Georgia, and formed on March 28, 2006, as the successor to the North American Electric Reliability Council (also known as NERC). The original N ...

in an effort to further enable its use as a

distributed system A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed computing is a field of computer sci ...

Operation

The phasor data concentrator runs as a

Windows service In Windows NT operating systems, a Windows service is a computer program that operates in the background. It is similar in concept to a Unix daemon. A Windows service must conform to the interface rules and protocols of the Service Control Manager ...

. The service is responsible for managing the life cycle of adapters that create and process the streaming phasor measurements. Adapters are split into three layers:openPDC Single Page Overview
Retrieved 8 June 2010. # The ''input adapter layer'' is typically responsible for receiving data from an outside source such as a

phasor measurement unit A phasor measurement unit (PMU) is a device used to estimate the magnitude and phase angle of an electrical phasor quantity (such as voltage or current) in the electricity grid using a common time source for synchronization. Time synchronization i ...

. That data is used to create measurements which are sent to other adapters to be processed or archived. # The ''action adapter layer'' is typically responsible for concentration and processing of the input measurements. Adapters in this layer can also introduce new measurements to the system, just like adapters in the input adapter layer. # The ''output adapter layer'' is typically responsible for archival of measurements received from the input adapter layer and the action adapter layer. These adapters can be configured using any one of three supported database systems:

Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft. As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications—which ma ...

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database o ...

, and

Microsoft Access Microsoft Access is a database management system (DBMS) from Microsoft that combines the relational Access Database Engine (ACE) with a graphical user interface and software-development tools (not to be confused with the old Microsoft Access w ...

.openPDC Getting Started: Set up the database
Retrieved 9 June 2010.

Features

The openPDC implements a number of standard phasor

protocols Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states * Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state * Etiquette, a code of personal behavior Science and technology ...

which can be used to receive data from devices. The supported protocols are IEEE C37.118 (v1.0 and Draft 6),

IEEE 1344 IEEE 1344 is a standard that defines parameters for synchrophasors for power systems. The standard added extension to the IRIG timecode, IRIG-B time code to cover year, time quality, daylight saving time, local time offset and leap second informati ...

, BPA PDCstream,

FNET FNET (Frequency monitoring Network; a.k.a. FNET/GridEye, GridEye) is a wide-area power system frequency measurement system. Using a type of phasor measurement unit (PMU) known as a frequency disturbance recorder (FDR), FNET/GridEye is able to meas ...

, SEL Fast Message, and Macrodyne. There is also a built-in concentration engine which sorts the real-time data into frames based on the

timestamp A timestamp is a sequence of characters or encoded information identifying when a certain event occurred, usually giving date and time of day, sometimes accurate to a small fraction of a second. Timestamps do not have to be based on some absolut ...

associated with each measurement. The sorted measurements can then be streamed to other applications using either IEEE C37.118 or BPA PDCstream. The system is capable of concentrating over one billion measurements per day coming from over 100 phasor measurement units across the

Eastern Interconnection The Eastern Interconnection is one of the two major alternating-current (AC) electrical grids in the North American power transmission grid. The other major interconnection is the Western Interconnection. The three minor interconnections are ...

. The project includes a historian for data archival. The files produced by the historian can later be analyzed using

Hadoop Apache Hadoop () is a collection of open-source software utilities that facilitates using a network of many computers to solve problems involving massive amounts of data and computation. It provides a software framework for distributed storage an ...

. The historian is also designed to be used in distributed systems, having a single

node In general, a node is a localized swelling (a "knot") or a point of intersection (a vertex). Node may refer to: In mathematics *Vertex (graph theory), a vertex in a mathematical graph *Vertex (geometry), a point where two or more curves, lines, ...

dedicated to archival and several others sending concentrated measurements to the central archive. This design even allows for its use in any distributed system enabling one PDC to filter measurements to another that is running a resource intensive adapter. The local historian provides web services which can be used to monitor the data being archived in real-time. The data quality monitoring adapters provide information about measurements entering the concentrator that have flat-lined, gone out of a specified range, or entered the concentrator with a bad timestamp.

Applications

Applications included in the openPDC project: * The ''openPDC Console'' is an application that can be used to send and receive messages between the openPDC service and a client machine.Introducing the openPDC Management System
Retrieved 9 June 2010. * The ''openPDC Manager'' is a utility intended to allow remote access and simplify adapter configurations in the database. * The ''PMU Connection Tester'' can be used to view a live stream of data in one of the supported protocols in order to test that the stream is being received. This tool has been used around the globe and can be installed separately from the rest of the suite. * The ''NASPI PMU Registry'' allows users to register phasor-related devices to one central location to allow access to information about existing devices and their configurations. * ''ConfigCrypter'' is a utility for encrypting options in the configuration files. * ''ConfigurationEditor'' provides a simple GUI-based application used to modify the XML configuration files.

References

External links