Architectural framework for the integration of distributed resources

Deregulation of the electricity sector, environmental concern, advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) and the appearance of new cost effective energy generation technologies, are driving the traditionally safe and reliable electrical network onto a situation in which the quality level of electricity supply will not only have to be maintained, but even increased, although difficulties for doing it will be greater than before due to uncertainties arising from competitive market driven transactions. The integration of market management together with the physical management of the electrical network creates several problems that the use of ICTs is going to help to solve. In this context, Internet and the semantic Web technologies appear as the most cost effective and promising way to achieve the interoperation of both interrelated worlds. SCADA is the basic system for every process control. The data provided by the SCADA system is mainly focused onto the control of the process without taking into account that the information can be used for other means and by other services within a utility. The research performed in this paper reports on the ways to achieve the utilization of the SCADA information in different kind of applications by wrapping the data values coming from the process with the semantic meaning of what they mean, and its use for different energy related applications.