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September 1, 2008
The Path to the Smart Grid, Public Power Magazine, September 2008
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Tim Blodgett
Hometown Connections
303-526-4515
tblodgett@hometownconnections.com
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Starts with SCADA and Substation Automation
If the last 10 years in the electric industry have been marked by change and uncertainty, the next few years promise to make the past appear tame by comparison. Rapidly escalating energy prices as well as federal and state legislative initiatives covering tightened environmental requirements, energy efficiency, time of use pricing and demand response will present myriad challenges to public power while legions of their most experienced managers are retiring. How does public power prepare itself in the midst of this uncertainty?
Virtually every industry ad, article, and presentation emphasizes how the smart grid will solve utility management problems, but how the smart grid infrastructure and its numerous applications will best serve public power remains an open question. The immediate challenge is to identify how to become an “intelligent utility” that will be ready to take advantage of smart metering and other innovations as they come online.
Proper technology planning can go a long way towards helping public power managers tackle today’s many challenges. Survalent Technology, public power’s leading SCADA vendor and partner with Hometown Connections, recommends that each public power system focus first on becoming an intelligent utility, taking concrete steps for automating more utility processes with the flexibility to accommodate new technologies as they develop.
Survalent Technology sees SCADA and substation automation as the foundations for the intelligent utility. “The key for public power is to create a strategic plan for utility automation that focuses on operational excellence and superior customer service,” said William Rambo, Vice President—Marketing, Survalent Technology. “Each utility needs a technology road map and work plan.”
Survalent is working with its electric utility customers and developing technology to increase their performance. The company is releasing new products and services this year including:
- NERC Compliance
- Fault Detection, Isolation and Restoration (FDIR),
- Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL)
- The industry’s first Multispeak GIS batch interface to SCADA and
- An integrated Outage Management solution
Survalent is complying with NERC’s Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Cyber Security Standards and recommends NERC compliance as a best practice for all utilities, even if not yet mandatory.
Furthermore, Survalent is integrating its SCADA system with outage management software. According to Rambo, “a single, familiar operator interface is what customers are asking for, simplifying the operations and enabling better decision making especially during a crisis”. The goal is to make straightforward the visual information on screen for the utility employee sitting at the operations console.
Survalent has developed a software application which provides automatic fault detection, isolation, and restoration (FDIR). The SCADA system will grab fault information from a field device, isolate the fault (either by giving an operator a visual cue and recommending a switch order, or making a switching change automatically), and restore power via another feed. Power is restored more quickly, minimizing the impact on customers.
In addition, Survalent has created a software interface using MultiSpeak® to allow utilities to automatically “batch” transfer maps from GIS over to SCADA on a regular schedule. MultiSpeak is an industry-wide software interface specification that supports the sharing of information between software applications. No longer will utility engineers need to cross check information from the city’s GIS system with SCADA. All mapping information is maintained in one location. “As far as we know, we are the only SCADA vendor offering this integrated mapping solution,” Rambo reported.
Finally, Survalent Technology has developed an interface to GPS transponding systems. Vehicle latitude and longitude coordinates are converted to a mobile unit icon on Survalent’s Worldview graphical user interface map. Moving the mouse over the icon provides a “tool tip” that indicates where the vehicle is heading, its speed, and its latest field assignment. A “find” function allows the console operator to locate and track a vehicle continuously, a feature that is particularly valuable for managing multiple crews during a major storm or other environmental hazard.
“Talking to public power officials across the country, I find there is great interest in the smart grid concept accompanied by hesitation about how to migrate utility technology and operations in that direction,” said Steve VanderMeer, National Sales Director, Hometown Connections. “Survalent’s approach to automating SCADA and substation operations resonates with public power as a logical, one-step-at-a-time road map for deploying technical innovations that are affordable and functional.”
Visit the Survalent Web Site for more information.
• Survalent Technology
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