Testbed Implementation for Wide Area Monitoring and Measurement of the Power Grid; Scalable Synchrophasors Communication Network Design

This is a combined synopsis/solicitation for commercial items prepared in accordance with the format in FAR Subpart 12.6, as supplemented with additional information included in this notice. THIS ACQUISITION IS BEING PROCURED USING SIMPLIFIED ACQUISITION PROCEDURES UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF FAR PART 13. THIS ANNOUNCEMENT CONSTITUTES THE ONLY SOLICITATION; QUOTATIONS ARE BEING REQUESTED AND A WRITTEN SOLICITATION DOCUMENT WILL NOT BE ISSUED.

This solicitation is a Request for Quote (RFQ). This solicitation document and incorporated clauses are those in effect through Federal Acquisition Circular 2005-76.

The associated North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) code for this procurement is 541511 and the size standard is $25.5 million. This acquisition is being conducted as a 100% small business set-aside.

The Advanced Network Technology Division (ANTD) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is currently working to develop a wireless network for wide area measurement systems. Much work has been done to implement a real-time network testbed consisting of many Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) located at various key substations. For a distributed generation this would require the deployment of PMU's at critical locations, which implies accurate phase measurement with the support of a low delay, highly reliable network infrastructure. In the absence of such a network, the most cost-effective solution would be to consider a wireless network to support centralized control for situational awareness in the transmission as well as the distributed generation grid environment.

The objective of this project is to design a scalable Wireless LAN (WLAN) based network, such as IEEE 802.11, to assess network performance and requirements under real world conditions. The plan is to design and implement a network testbed that includes an emulation platform to support the Physical (PHY) and Medium Access Control (MAC) layers.

See attached solicitation and Statement of Work (SOW).