Design and development of host to host communication using IDEC protocol

The Inter-Utility Data Exchange Consortium (IDEC) provides a data communication capability interface to exchange data between host EMS computers of different utilities. The IDEC protocol defines the interfaces between the host EMS computer and the communications network processor (CNP), and between CNPs. Both NEPEX and CONVEX have EMS supplied by the same vendor. To take advantage of the commonality between their energy management systems, they jointly developed host to CNP IDEC software to replace an existing datalink between the utilities and to exchange data with other utilities in the IDEC network. The IDEC software provides capability to model the IDEC database using existing generation and SCADA databases. The IDEC data model was extended to provide flexibility in scheduling data blocks. The completed software has been exchanging operational data between the utilities, using CNPs at their respective control centers for almost a year. This study reports the results of the design and development of the IDEC software. The completed IDEC software requires minimal computational resources on the host machine