Drummond Group offers management and technical consulting in the following areas:
Test Lab Consulting
Drummond Group provides our clients with the highest level of Quality Assurance, Software/Systems Testing, Configuration Management, and related consulting for their specific needs. Test Lab Consulting offers a wide range of services based on our Test Lab services and Test Management.
Smart Grid Consulting
Drummond Group Smart Grid Consulting handles the key issue to Smart Grid adoption: interoperability. Today, there are many evolving technologies in a very young market with few standards in place to support interoperability of the products and services available. But, the critical link to the Grid's success and cost savings is interoperability of standards, technology and processes. Drummond Group's Smart Grid consulting integrates with our clients' business groups to ensure technology centric projects are executed in a successful manner.
The GridWise Architecture Council has developed a context setting framework for interoperability, and the definition we use for interoperability is: "The capability of two or more networks, systems, devices, applications, or components to exchange information between them and to use the information so exchanged." Interoperability testing has two major components: the technical component and methodological component. The crucial nature of technical expertise in interoperability testing is intuitive to all, but the necessity of a viable and comprehensive testing methodology is often not appreciated and overlooked.
Test methodology involves the proper staging of:
- Debug testing, problem tracking, resolution and re-testing
- Backward and forward version testing and other life-cycle issues
- Feedback of observed problems back into the technical standards and the bodies that oversee them
Most of the technical standards supporting Smart Grid are in a late development phase and await final market and deployment integration. Hence some problems should be expected in all areas of implementation. Even small issues can be extremely costly especially when multiplied by the thousands of different implementations and deployments. It behooves the client to ascertain the issues early and address and solve them for the individual vendors and utilities so as to reduce installation and ongoing operational costs. It is for this reason that experienced leadership is needed in creating the interoperability testing methodology. If the test methodology is not well constructed, costly problems will be found in later phases or in new version roll-outs and other life-cycle issues.
A common interoperability problem area is the standards writing process and the affect on the prototype, implementation, testing and interoperability.
Rik Drummond , CEO and Chief Scientist of Drummond Group, is current member and past chair of the GridWise Architecture Committee. He leads the Drummond Group Smart Grid Consulting practice and has been directly involved in writing, prototyping and testing interoperability of many internet standards used today.
Smart Grid Services
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