Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Inc. (SEL) today announced that the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) has certified SEL as a third-party engineering firm and the SEL RTAC as a Remote Intelligent Gateway (RIG) for direct telemetry of participating generators and loads within the CAISO balancing authority area. 

Metering and telemetry are mandatory tools used to ensure operational visibility and accurate revenue accounting for the ISO grid. The RIG allows CAISO to access generator information and/or controls from the ISO’s Energy Management System (EMS) in order to provide nonregulation ancillary services and supplemental energy. Generation facilities that want to interconnect at the transmission level must install a field RIG unit or an acceptable equivalent that can interface with the EMS.

For RIG qualification, devices must meet or exceed requirements for data accuracy, integrity, security, and communications. The SEL RTAC exceeded all certification requirements, including secure communications via Transport Layer Security (TLS); X.509 certificate generation with the option of 1024- and 2048-bit RSA key sizes; the ability to store CA certificates issued by CAISO; a data integrity check on all values by reporting information on quality; configurable scaling of analog inputs; and a point-to-point check validating the correct scaling of signals.

As an approved third-party engineering firm, SEL is fully qualified to provide the design, integration and commissioning services required to bring its RIG online and comply with CAISO requirements. The RTAC joins the SEL-734 Advanced Metering System and SEL-735 Power Quality and Revenue Meter as a CAISO-approved device. 

Iberdrola Renewables is the first company within CAISO to deploy the RTAC as a RIG device. Replacing the existing solution with an RTAC has saved Iberdrola several thousand dollars in maintenance fees per year and gives Iberdrola’s technical staff the tools to make changes without having to contact a third-party engineering firm. 

“Iberdrola has standardized on the SEL RTAC for many of its applications,” said Josh Homer, Iberdrola technical staff. “With the in-house expertise we have developed with the RTAC platform and its reliable hardware, it was an easy decision to migrate our existing solution to the RTAC.”

The RTAC is a powerful, economical and secure solution for a multitude of data concentration, control, and automation applications. For more information, go to www.selinc.com/p233. 

SEL serves the power industry worldwide through the design, manufacture, supply and support of products and services for power system protection, monitoring, control, automation, communications and metering. For more than 30 years, SEL has provided industry-leading performance in products and services, local technical support, a 10-year worldwide warranty and a commitment to making electric power safer, more reliable and more economical.