A Systems Approach to Information Technology (IT) Infrastructure Design for Utility Management Automation Systems

Almost all of electric utility companies are planning to improve their management automation system, in order to meet the changing requirements of new liberalized energy market and to benefit from the innovations in information and communication technology (ICT or IT). Architectural design of the utility management automation (UMA) systems for their IT-enabling requires proper selection of IT choices for UMA system, which leads to multi-criteria decision-makings (MCDM). In response to this need, this paper presents a model-based architectural design-decision methodology. The system design problem is formulated first; then, the proposed design method is introduced, and implemented to one of the UMA functions–feeder reconfiguration function (FRF)– for a test distribution system. The results of the implementation are depicted, and comparatively discussed. The paper is concluded by going beyond the results and fair generalization of the discussed results; finally, the future under-study or under-review works are declared.