New DER Communications Platform Enables DERMS and Conforms with IEEE 1547–2018 Requirements

As the industry transitions from interconnection to tight integration of Distributed Energy Resources (DER), a reliable and secure communications capability is required to enable new grid support functions such as those defined in the 2018 revision of the IEEE 1547 DER interconnection standard. The new standard mandates having at least one (out of three) communication protocol in order to facilitate sending commands and receiving status to and from the DER. This new requirement creates a number of challenges for utilities attempting to integrate DER assets onto their grid system. This paper describes a new 3-tier conceptual architecture that is built on an existing anti-islanding (AI) foundation. Named DERCOM, this new architecture is optimized to provide a scalable and flexible communications network for DER integration, as required by the 1547-2018 standard.