Delivering power system decision support tools over the web

Utilities world over use decision support tools based on in-premise software with standalone architecture and suffer vulnerability when needing to extend their application to meet new business requirements. Accessibility of these applications are limited to specific operating environments resulting in restricted information being available at the right place and time to support decision making. Unlike other sectors such as Financial Services, Banking etc., power sector is yet to leverage the benefits of the internet technologies for efficient operations. In a deregulated system designed to support open access, decision making has to be transparent and it requires participation of many players whose behavior is governed by diverse interests from profitable trade all the way to security in system operations. In particular it is foreseen that decision support tools should be so deployed that they can be accessed from anywhere and at any time. This led to the work on introducing Software-as-a-Service model for power system analysis computations - using the internet to provide access from anywhere and at any time. This work extends the architecture to other power system decision support tools to make them available over the web based on the SaaS model. Tools to evaluate Smart Grid Maturity of the utilities based on the Smart Grid Maturity Model (SGMM) are proposed. Cloud computing based virtualization and hosting options are also examined.