The realities of testing meter firmware upgradeability

Aaron F. Snyder, Ben Rankin, Isabelle B. Snyder, Tom Swain

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

One of the critical issues facing electric utilities and their regulators is the need to ensure that technologies or solutions that are selected by those utilities will be interoperable. Further, many utilities want to ensure that the systems they select will allow for evolution and growth as Smart Grid standards evolve. To manage change in a dynamically growing Smart Grid, it is essential to be able to remotely upgrade firmware, such as that found in meters, without replacing the equipment or manually performing this in the field. Remote image download capability will permit certain characteristics of the meter to be substantially altered on an as-needed basis. This discusses the challenges involved in the standard-to-testing lifecycle, including the development of a set of requirements, constructing a testing framework based on those requirements, performance of the tests with vendor support, and evaluation of the test results versus expectations, as well as subsequent recommendations.

Original languageEnglish
DOIs
StatePublished - 2014
Event2014 Clemson University Power Systems Conference, PSC 2014 - Clemson, SC, United States
Duration: Mar 11 2014Mar 14 2014

Conference

Conference2014 Clemson University Power Systems Conference, PSC 2014
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityClemson, SC
Period03/11/1403/14/14

Keywords

  • Authentication
  • Communication system security
  • Standards
  • System testing
  • Watthour meters

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