INFORMATION SYSTEM ENGINEERING FOR AN

ELECTRICITY DISTRIBUTION COMPANY

Diane Asensio, Abdelaziz Khadraoui and Michel Léonard

MATIS Geneva Team, Centre Universitaire d’Informatique (CUI), University of Geneva

Rue du Général Dufour 24, CH-1211 Genève 4, Switzerland

Keywords: Electricity distribution, IS engineering, Ontology, Informational kernel, Organizational layers.

Abstract: Information Systems (IS) of electricity distribution companies are often composed of various and

heterogeneous applications or systems that need to exchange information. Distribution activities evolve in

different contexts and environments, and the interoperability is a particular difficult task to realize for

electricity distribution companies. A laws-based IS engineering approach is proposed in our research

laboratory. Given the distribution activities are regulated by a legal framework, we propose to apply this

approach to the electricity distribution domain.

1 INTRODUCTION

The main business activities of electricity utilities

are production, transport, distribution and

consumption. Distribution activity consists of

deliverying electricity to end users. The major

business functions of electricity distribution contain

activities that are responsible for the network, which

are acting in a real-time environment that must

interact with external activities of network

operations like financial systems, maintenance

systems, resource planning etc. Distribution

networks generally include high-voltage, medium-

voltage and low-voltage power lines. The

distribution management domain covers business

functions, software systems, physical equipment and

staff concerned with the distribution of electrical

power to consumers. Distribution management can

be divided in two distinct sub-activities: on the one

hand the electricity supply that is concerned with the

purchase of electrical energy from bulk producers

for sale to individual consumers, and on the other

hand the electricity distribution that covers the

management of the physical distribution network

that connects the producers or consumers.

Distribution activities are governed by a legal

framework represented by a set of laws that regulate

their execution.

Recently an innovative approach (Khadraoui,

2007) for Information System (IS) engineering

based on laws ontology has been developed that

allows extracting knowledge from laws, which is

described by laws-based ontology, since the initial

stage of IS development to discover informational

concepts, rules and roles in the related IS. This

approach helps systematic compliance of an IS to be

developed with the laws as well as to align the IS

with the laws evolution.

The objective of this paper is to present the work

accomplished in a Genevan electricity company at

SIG

(Industrials Services of Geneva) that aimed to

apply the proposed approach for IS engineering in

the context of an electricity distribution company.

SIG is a public independent utility that ensures

services distribution of proximity for all Geneva’s

population and is responsible for water, gas,

electricity and heat-energy supply for the entire

Geneva territory. This work focuses on the

electricity distribution part.

An IS of an electricity distribution company is

often composed of various, distributed software

application systems which support the management

of electrical distribution network. Therefore, the IS

must be able to exchange information between these

heterogeneous systems, generally provided by

different vendors. The questions about IS integration

http://www.sig-ge.ch

448

Asensio D., Khadraoui A. and Léonard M. (2008).

INFORMATION SYSTEM ENGINEERING FOR AN ELECTRICITY DISTRIBUTION COMPANY.

In Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - ISAS, pages 448-453

DOI: 10.5220/0001722704480453

 SciTePress

are independent from the legal framework, but are

more questions of IS efficiency. Furthermore IS

helping distribution management at SIG must be

compliant with the new law regulating the future

open Swiss market of electricity called LApEl

(“Act

about Electricity Supply

”) that will come into force

on the 1

January 2008. An organism called AES

(“Association of Electricity Swiss companies

”)

responsible for the good process of the liberalization

of electricity market in Switzerland edited standards

named “Recommendations for the branch” that aim

at fulfilling the conditions of the future law; they

describe concepts, roles, and rules related to various

activities of an electricity distribution company and

therefore contain main source of knowledge on

which we can build the informational kernel of IS to

support the electricity distribution activity. In other

words, these recommendations are considered to be

the semantic universe on which some parts of the IS

kernel can be built.

The objective of this paper is to report the work

done in SIG that consisted to apply the following

proposed approach to the context of the electricity

distribution domain. This paper is structured as

follows. In the section 2 we introduce the framework

of our approach for IS engineering. In the section 3

we briefly describe the legal sources we use to apply

the proposed approach to the electricity distribution

domain and we illustrate our work with a simple

example. We end the paper with some conclusions.

2 LAWS-BASED ONTOLOGY

FOR IS ENGINEERING

The proposed approach for IS engineering based on

laws ontology aims to extract knowledge from legal

sources in order to help compliance of the IS with

the legislation in which is acting. The proposed

approach for IS engineering is carried out according

to a framework including four levels: the ontological

level, the informational level, the activities domain

level, the technical level. As we can see in figure 1,

these four levels are independent but strongly linked

to one another; none of these levels must be isolated

and some conceptual interrelations must be taken

into account.

The ontological level in which all the

fundamental and stable concepts are listed, defined

and positioned in function of the relations between

« Loi sur l’Approvisionnement en Electricité » means the

law that will operate the Swiss electricity market.

« Association des entreprises Electriques Suisses »

them, corresponds to the starting point of the

approach. Ontological models built with these

concepts describe a specific domain; in our work the

electricity distribution domain. Besides invariant

concepts, some ontological roles and rules are

identified in this level. An ontological role is defined

as a particular organizational role

that is

fundamental for the IS development. Business rules

are used to help the organization to better achieve

goals, communicate between principals and agents,

between the organization and interested third parties,

demonstrate fulfilment of legal obligations, operate

more efficiently, perform analysis and current

practices. Laws contain business rules. A part of

these business rules will be expressed as integrity

constraints

in the IS. Their role is to preserve the

coherence, correctness and consistency of an IS

during its exploitation.

The informational level is composed of the IS

kernel that represents the base of the IS and of

organizational layers that complete the IS kernel.

The kernel is built directly from the ontology,

translating the different concepts and relations

between them in informational elements according

to some directives. The informational level is

specified with static, dynamic and regular aspects

that will be expressed with integrity constraints.

Specifying the IS kernel from the IS ontology is not

sufficient to make the IS operational; the kernel that

derived from the IS ontology still needs to be

completed with organizational layers that are

representing the specific aspects of a particular

organization not described in the laws. The

organizational aspects relate to the business rules,

the business processes, the business activities and

the organizational roles inside an organization.

Applied to the electricity distribution domain

organizational layers will describe the organizational

aspects of the distribution activity.

The activities domain level allows describing

how actors of an institution can work together and

how they coordinate their activities. This level

clarifies decisions and internal responsibilities of the

institution. Elements describing the activities

domain level are mainly business activities, business

processes, and organizational roles.

WfMC defines an organizational role as list of attributes,

of competencies, and know-how that an actor possesses

and put into practice; and so it defines the position of an

actor in an institution

(Khadraoui, 2007).

Integrity constraints are logical conditions defined over

classes, verified by transactions or methods.

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Figure 1: Framework for laws-based IS engineering (Khadraoui, 2007).

Finally the technical level aims to study the

implementation of the concepts specified in the

informational level. It is about choice of the

technology, of informatics architecture and

environment adequate for the deployment of the IS.

The next section describes how we apply the

approach at the domain of electricity distribution and

we demonstrate how the recommendations proposed

by the AES can be considered as main source of

knowledge for electricity distribution. We illustrate

our words with a simple example that handles of the

process to execute when a consumer chooses to

change of energy provider.

3 STANDARDS “AES” AS MAIN

SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE

3.1 Documents Description

The Association of Electricity Swiss companies

(AES) published a series of standards that provide

means for all actors of the market to keep the right

balance of electricity supply during and after the

market opening of the electricity Swiss market and

may constitute the legal framework on which the

ontological level of IS engineering can be built. The

recommendations of AES were edited in view of the

electricity market opening in Switzerland and they

represent the content of the future governing law.

We can extract from these recommendations some

stable and fundamental concepts. In addition, some

ontological roles and business rules can also be

identified and extracted from this document.

3.2 Illustration

3.2.1 Construction of a Part of the IS

Ontology

We illustrate our approach with an example based

on a simple process that handles the case of a change

of energy provider. This process describes

interactions produced between the different market

actors when a consumer wants to change his energy

provider. According to the description of this

process given in the Standardized Exchange of Data

document, when a consumer wants to change his

electricity provider, he first has to conclude a

contract with a new provider in agreement with the

old one. As soon as all contractual conditions are

fulfilled, the change demand can be sent to the

Distribution Network Manager (DNM). The DNM

receives the change demand and analyses it. Two

kinds of decision can be taken by the DNM: either

the demand is refused or the demand is accepted.

The first decision stops the process here: the motive

of the refusal is sent and the old contract remains

active. In the other case, when the demand is

accepted by the DNM, a notification of change is

sent and the old contract (with the old provider)

should be cancelled (inactive). The old provider can

send the closing bill to the consumer, and the new

supply can begin.

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The example handles a small part of an IS of an

electricity distribution company: it focuses only on

the provider change demand for a consumer. Even in

this process of provider change, we do not give an

entire and exhaustive representation, because it is

obvious that others concepts have to be taken into

account in view to be a real and full example.

The ontology model is represented by an

oriented graph where nodes are concepts and edges

are links between concepts. A concept can be the

generalization or specialization of another concept;

this relationship is useful to classify concepts

according to their common properties or

specificities. A concept C

depends existentially on a

concept C

if the existence of C

is related to the

existence of C

; if the concept C

disappears then the

concept C

disappears too. In our model, a concept

can be an instance of another concept. The instance,

itself is considered as a concept.

In the ontology model, there is no distinction of

static or dynamic concepts (e.g. static concepts

correspond to objects whereas dynamic concepts

correspond to object behaviours, processes in the

real world). Ontology model has three types of

links: (i) instantiations, (ii) existential dependencies

and (iii) generalization/specialization links

(Khadraoui, 2007).

Table 1: Provider change demand sending.

Recommendation fragment: “The new provider sends

to the DNM a change demand, immediately or

maximum 10 business days before the beginning of

supply. Consumer must have concluded a new supply

contract with the new provider and agreed with the new

and the old provider about contractual conditions of

electricity supply.”

Concepts extracted: Consumer, Provider, Supply

contract, Beginning date of supply.

Ontological roles: Consumer, Provider, DNM

Ontological business rules: The provider change

demand can only occur if a contract has previously

been agreed with the new and the old provider.

Table 2: Reception of the change demand.

Recommendation fragment: “The DNM receives the

change demand and will process it. The date of

reception must be 10 business days before the

beginning date of supply.”

Concepts extracted: DNM, Provider change demand,

Processing of provider change demand, Date of

reception.

Ontological roles: DNM

Ontological business rules: The demand must be sent

at least 10 business days before the beginning date of

supply.

Table 3: Processing of the change demand.

Recommendation fragment:“The DNM sends a

confirmation or a refusal to the new provider

immediately or maximum 5 business days after the date

of reception and fixes a date of change. In case of

refusal, the process has to stop and the old supply

contract stays active. In case of acceptance, a final date

of change must be fixed.”

Concepts extracted: Decision, Provider change

demand accepted, Provider change demand refused,

Refusal motive, Date of change.

Ontological roles: DNM

Ontological business rules: The delay to send the

decision by the DNM is 5 business days.

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Table 4: Acceptation of the provider change demand and

contract termination.

Recommendation fragment: “When the change

demand is accepted the old provider can send his

closing bill to the consumer and an effective date of

termination is established since when the new provider

can supply the consumer. The closing bill can only be

sent if the provider change demand has been accepted

by the DNM and all the data’s have been sent to all

related actors.”

Concepts extracted: Termination, Closing bill,

terminated supply contract, Effective date of

termination.

Ontological roles: DNM, Old energy provider, New

energy provider, Consumer.

Ontological business rules: The old provider can send

his closing bill only if his supply contract has been

correctly terminated.

The entire model of the change of energy

provider is represented below. This kind of model

corresponds to the ontological level from which we

build the IS kernel and expresses all the concepts

related to a change of provider.

As we notice here all the concepts have the same

importance on an ontological model; the static,

dynamic and integrity constraints aspects are not

taken in account at this level. This kind of model

cannot be directly implemented; it needs first to be

translated into an information model that regroups

all derived models from the IS ontology.

3.2.2 Construction of a Part of the

Informational Kernel

A set of derivation rules is applied in order to pass

from the ontological level to the informational level.

These directives are described through some cases

considering. These guidelines are described in

(Khadraoui, 2007). If we apply those directives, we

can have these results. The concepts “Consumer”

and “Provider” become two classes from which a

class “Supply contract” is existentially dependant

while the two concepts ‘Beginning date of supply’

and “Contractual conditions” are both translated

into attributes of the class “Supply contract”. The

concept “Processing of provider change demand” is

translated in a transaction that will have an input

class “Provider change demand” and will create an

output class “Decision”. Concepts that are

instantiations of other concepts are generally

translated in value of attributes of the class. The

concept “Date of reception” becomes for example

an attribute of the class “Provider change demand”.

We developed an integrated model in (Turki

2005), (Pham Thi, 2005) and (Pham Thi, 2007

) to

integrate static and dynamic aspects into only one

model. This integrated model is a bipartite graph

where one kind of nodes correspond to classes and

another kind of nodes corresponds to transactions.

The IS kernel can be completed with

organizational aspects not described in laws. For this

purpose a methodology is defined in (Khadraoui,

2007).

The aim is to support the identification of: (i) the

activities that should be supported by IS; (ii) the

existing business processes and transactions in

which several actors (organizational actors,

departments, authorities) are involved; (iii) the

activities and processes that should be reorganized,

transformed or created due to the IS development;

(iv) the organizational roles; (v) the business rules,

not described in laws, embedded into work practices.

4 CONCLUSIONS

During the work at SIG we first considered IEC

(International Electrotechnical Commission)

norm

which aims to facilitate inter-application integration

and defines interfaces for the major elements of

interfaces architecture of a distribution management

system. The difficulties we encountered with the

IEC standards came essentially from the specificity

of the used terms. The complex structure of these

standards represented an additional complication in

order to apply the proposed approach.

After that we oriented our research on the

national standards elaborated by the AES and our

results were more relevant; we assume that we can

apply the proposed approach to the electricity

distribution domain using the AES recommendations

as legal sources from which we build the IS

ontology and from which some parts of the IS kernel

can be built.

http://www.iec.ch/

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Figure 2: Conceptual model of the provider change demand.

Figure 3: Part of the IS kernel related to the provider change demand.

We demonstrate it with a simple example and we

build the ontological model of a process used in the

case of change of energy provider.

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