PIVA: Photovoltaic (PV) Integration using Virtual Airgap (Award DE-EE0009631)

Most utilities are reticent to integrate BTM telemetry with control room systems because it violates the ‘airgap’ principle for mission-critical Operations Technology (OT). Also, there is an inherent ‘impedance’ mismatch between newer IoT protocols and legacy SCADA-based systems. Our ‘Virtual Airgap’ concept is a cloud-based integration layer that decouples PV data collection from OT systems like EMS or ADMS. A ‘Geo-Temporal Stream Analytics’ engine (based on open-source Kafka and Spark technologies) performs semantically aware data validation, transformation, and estimation as part of the integration. This improves usability, reliability, and security by neutralizing the operational impacts of both benign and malicious cyber-risks. Bad data is naturally filtered out, missing data is automatically filled in, and sensitive data is mathematically de-identified. It would also help solve an emerging challenge of TSO-DSO-Aggregator-Retailer coordination of DER.

Read the project press release here: https://www.newswire.com/news/u-s-department-of-energy-solar-energy-technologies-office-selects-21702595