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
1
(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
1
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
Copyright
c
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
2
”) that will come into force
on the 1
st
January 2008. An organism called AES
(“Association of Electricity Swiss companies
3
”)
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
2
« Loi sur l’Approvisionnement en Electricité » means the
law that will operate the Swiss electricity market.
3
« 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
4
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
5
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.
4
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).
5
Integrity constraints are logical conditions defined over
classes, verified by transactions or methods.
INFORMATION SYSTEM ENGINEERING FOR AN ELECTRICITY DISTRIBUTION COMPANY
449
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.
ICEIS 2008 - International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
450
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
1
depends existentially on a
concept C
2
if the existence of C
1
is related to the
existence of C
2
; if the concept C
2
disappears then the
concept C
1
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.
INFORMATION SYSTEM ENGINEERING FOR AN ELECTRICITY DISTRIBUTION COMPANY
451
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)
6
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.
6
http://www.iec.ch/
ICEIS 2008 - International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
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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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