Utility Automation & Engineering T&D articles from September 2005

Utility Automation & Engineering T&D archives from September 2005

Katrina tragedy overshadows energy bill triumph.(FROM THE EDITOR)
September 1, 2005... When you write an editorial column for a magazine that comes out every other month--like this one does--you occasionally run into a situation where you have too many interesting options to write about. That's exactly what happened to me in the...

UNC breaks ground on underground distribution project.(University of North Carolina)(underground distribution system )
September 1, 2005... Projecting growth of their primary load base to increase by 5.9 million square feet of educational facility over the next decade throughout their 700-acre campus, University of North Carolina facility managers initiated a study in 2001 to...

SDG & E begins testing broadband over power lines.(NEWS)(San Diego Gas & Electric Co)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG & E) in July unveiled details of its planned pilot test of broadband over power line (BPL) technology. SDG & E planned to begin testing the technology Sept. 1, 2005, and will continue the pilot project for up...

Deadline approaching for 2005 Projects of the Year Awards.(NEWS)
September 1, 2005... The Nov. 14, 2005, deadline is fast approaching for the third annual Utility Automation & Engineering T & D Projects of the Year Awards. The awards program is designed to honor the most innovative electric power transmission and...

$400 million transmission project to benefit Long Island.(NEWS)(Neptune Regional Transmission System)
September 1, 2005... Neptune Regional Transmission System (RTS) has awarded Siemens Power Transmission and Distribution (PTD) a contract worth more than $200 million to construct an undersea high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) transmission link between Sayreville,...

Hawaiian Electric implementing direct load management.(NEWS)
September 1, 2005... Hawaiian Electric Co. (HECO) is implementing a system wide direct load management program that will provide a foundation for reducing peak electrical demand and provide its customers new choices for reducing electricity costs. The company was...

Progress to install 2.7 million AMR meters in Florida, Carolinas.(automated meter reading )(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Progress Energy has entered into a contract with Itron to replace 2.7 million traditional electromechanical residential meters with Itron's CENTRON solid-state electricity meters equipped with Itron's embedded automated meter reading (AMR)...

KCP & L rolling out wireless monitoring and control.(NEWS)(Kansas City Power and Light Co.)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Kansas City Power & Light (KCP & L) is moving forward with a wireless monitoring and control project rollout with Telemetric's DNP-Remote Telemetry Module (RTM). KCP & L is using the Telemetric DNP-RTM to monitor and control network protectors...

ABB joins EPRI's IntelliGrid Consortium.(NEWS)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... ABB recently signed a multi-year agreement to join EPRI's IntelliGrid Consortium. The IntelliGrid Consortium is an association of electric utilities, manufacturers, researchers and federal/state agencies working together to apply...

Hunt Power offering satellite service for Elster meters.(NEWS)(Elster ALPHA Plus meters)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Hunt Power recently announced its ability to collect energy usage data from Elster Electricity ALPHA Plus meters via satellite. In a move last fall, Hunt Power launched a two-way satellite service to read GE KV2 series meters for utility...

Alabama Power to boost transmission capacity with ACCR conductor.(Aluminum Conductor Composite Reinforced )
September 1, 2005... Alabama Power Co., which supplies electricity to 1.3 million homes, businesses and industrial facilities, will become the third major utility to install 3M's Aluminum Conductor Composite Reinforced (ACCR) electricity conductor. The ACCR is a...

Open standards, cyber-threat driving SCADA market trends.(NEWS)
September 1, 2005... Analysis from Frost & Sullivan, North American Power Transmission SCADA Systems Markets, reveals that revenue in these markets totaled $150.3 million in 2004 and projects to grow to $214.7 million by 2011. But, according to Frost &...

Trans Bay HVDC project gets green light from cal ISO.(NEWS)(high-voltage direct current )
September 1, 2005... Trans Bay Cable (TBC), a subsidiary of international investment and advisory firm Babcock & Brown, has received approval from the California Independent System Operator (ISO) for its proposed high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission...

Iowa Lakes Electric co-op integrates field design and GIS.(Geographic information systems)
September 1, 2005... Iowa Lakes Electric Cooperative (ILEC) has successfully deployed Powel-MiniMax's Utility Decision Support Platform (UDSP). ILEC's first two UDSP modules, StakeOut and GIS, are expected to provide a single platform for seamless field-to-office...

Newly patented technology helps transformers keep their cool.(Trexco)
September 1, 2005... The U.S. Patent Office has awarded Trexco a patent for its technology, which promises to add capacity to power transformers in the nation's electric grid. The new technology works by capturing waste heat generated by load losses from the...

Miner & Miner, ViryaNet integrate products to improve crew management.(NEWS)
September 1, 2005... Miner & Miner, a Telvent company, and ViryaNet recently announced an initiative to integrate their Responder OMS and Service Hub products to provide integrated crew management for outage restorations and repairs in the field. The two companies...

Energy Policy Act of 2005 gives transmission a boost.
September 1, 2005... In the relatively small amount of space devoted to it--roughly 70 pages out of 1,724--transmission received a much-needed boost from the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Among the provisions related directly to transmission is one that...

Mobile workforce management powers the Carolinas.
September 1, 2005... Driving forces in our industry are changing the way utility companies like Duke Power must compete with rivals, work with suppliers, and offer services to customers to stay competitive. In many ways, the story of Duke Power, headquartered in...

Enterprise GIS for electric and gas utilities.(geographic information system)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Integrate your operations, customer, field, and engineering data with ArcGIS[R]. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Utilities are discovering the benefits a geographic information system (GIS) brings to information management. GIS software...

Flight mapping for transmission inventory with GIS.(Geographic information systems)
September 1, 2005... Basin Electric Power Cooperative is a regional wholesale electric generation and transmission cooperative serving 120 member systems that provide power and services to 1.8 million consumers in nine states. Small aircraft have proven very useful...

Demand dramatic improvement--unify your work, assets and resources.
September 1, 2005... LogicaCMG's Asset & Resource Management (ARM) suite provides the foundation utilities need to achieve dramatic business improvements. With ARM, utilities can unify their work, assets and resources to reduce costs and better manage their...

MDS Mobile Data solutions: empowering the field force.
September 1, 2005... Mobility is a critical requirement for today's utility company handling mission-critical information. That information must be available in the field, on the move and in real time. No organization can afford to spend time managing coverage gaps...

Alliant Energy uses ArcFM Viewer[TM] as mobile application.(Alliant Energy Corp)
September 1, 2005... Alliant Energy Corp. provides electric, gas, water, and steam services to more than three million customers worldwide. Established in 1998 through the merger of Wisconsin Power & Light Co., IES Industries, and Interstate Power Co., and through...

Southern California Edison improves work force efficiency with mobile workforce management.(Southern California Edison Co)
September 1, 2005... Background Southern California Edison (SCE) is one of the largest electric utilities in the United States, and the largest subsidiary of Edison International. SCE supplies power to 12 million people via 4.6 million business and residential...

Mobile computing: best practices for asset maintenance programs.
September 1, 2005... As government regulations become stricter and increasing pressure is placed on maintenance departments to better track equipment performance and maintenance activities, mobile computing has emerged as a viable solution to improve asset...

Harnessing the power of Xplore's rugged Tablet PC's to better serve the community.
September 1, 2005... The organization that would evolve into Huntsville Utilities was founded in 1823, as Huntsville Waterworks and was Alabama's first public water system. Over the years, the organization has grown and added new technologies and services to meet...

Spacenet.(Company Profile)
September 1, 2005... Company Profile Spacenet has more than 20 years of experience providing wide area networks, application support, customer care and network management for some of the largest satellite-based networks in the world. We are a provider of...

Cybersecurity for legacy SCADA systems.(supervisory control and data acquisition)
September 1, 2005... The security of legacy supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems has come under intense scrutiny as a result of homeland security initiatives being put in place to protect the nation's critical infrastructure. Presidential...

Research challenges conventional ROW management wisdom.(rights of way )
September 1, 2005... Close only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades; not with herbicides. For years, conventional thinking assumed that cut-stump and basal treatments on rights of way (ROWs) resulted in less herbicide deposited off-target than foliar...

ROW vegetation management.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Aerotec has developed ROW multi-media mapping products directed at providing ROW vegetation managers & staff with solutions to address their needs. Aerotec's ROW mapping products allow you to: 1. Rapidly visually inspect (using a GIS-based...

Metering data aids asset optimization.
September 1, 2005... According to Kevin Cornish, director of utility solutions for Distribution Control Systems Inc., monthly usage data is almost irrelevant for designing a distribution system. "The monthly consumption figure a utility sees may have climbed...

Power system test equipment.(M5200 SFRA )
September 1, 2005... Power system test equipment is essential to the continuing safe operation of T & D equipment. In this issue's "Getting Equipped" feature we take a look at a few of the latest product introductions in the field of power system test equipment....

Substation monitoring system.(NEW PRODUCTS)
September 1, 2005... Mikron Infrared's new DualVision Ultra substation monitoring system combines airborne ultrasound sensing with visual and infrared video for continuous substation monitoring in an environmentally hardened, Internet-enabled package. The...

Secure remote IED access.(NEW PRODUCTS)
September 1, 2005... Bow Networks announces Version 2 of IED Anywhere, the company's proven solution for secure, managed remote access to substation IEDs and other remote devices. IED Anywhere 2 provides the user with convenient point-and-click access to remote...

Thermal imaging.(NEW PRODUCTS)
September 1, 2005... The ThermaCAM EX320 from FLIR Systems, has a built-in 320-by-240 pixel array, providing four times the resolution of any hand-held camera its size and in its price range. In addition to a high-resolution, maintenance-free, un-cooled FPA...

Test equipment catalog.(NEW PRODUCTS)
September 1, 2005... Sperry Instruments' new 52-page product catalog displays the complete Sperry line of test instruments. Each product is accompanied by a color photo, feature listing, packaging information, optional accessories and specifications. An...

Capacitor Control.(NEW PRODUCTS)
September 1, 2005... The GPS24 Series multi-function programmable capacitor control, from Accurate Controls, is used to automatically control power capacitors in an electric utility distribution system. The GPS24 utilizes a GPS receiver to obtain accurate time and...

Radio modems.(NEW PRODUCTS)
September 1, 2005... ArWest Communications' AlphaWave range of narrow-band radio modems and associated management software, AWare, are high-performance radio modems designed for the SCADA market where robustness and reliability are paramount. Designers applied...

Dispatch system.(NEW PRODUCTS)
September 1, 2005... Avtec Inc. DSPatchNET is a dispatch communications system that uses touch-screen consoles to connect multiple phones, base stations, mobile radios and intercoms in both single-site and multi-site organizations. For companies currently using...

Rugged computers.(NEW PRODUCTS)
September 1, 2005... The W130-series of notebook computers, from Getac Inc., can survive 4-foot drops on concrete, and will be the first rugged laptop manufacturer to offer Toshiba's 1.8-inch Hard Disk Drive (HDD) for a lighter, less power-hungry rugged system....

Business Intelligence software.(NEW PRODUCTS)
September 1, 2005... SPL WorldGroup announces the introduction and availability of their robust "out of the box" Business Intelligence software application built specifically for the needs of the utility market. SPL's suite of enterprise software solutions is...

Connectors and fittings.(NEW PRODUCTS)
September 1, 2005... These convenient product selector wheels from Hubbell Power Systems Inc. are ideal for selecting the right connectors and fittings for the appropriate T & D conductors. The selector wheels remove guessing, are easy-to-use, help to quickly find...

Aerial Splice.(NEW PRODUCTS)
September 1, 2005... The new QIKSLEEVE Aerial Wedge Splice, from FCI-BURNDY, is perfect for slack span and tension applications, and features significant design, energy, and laborsaving improvements over conventional tubular connector methods. QIKSLEEVE has a range...

SCADA management software.(NEW PRODUCTS)
September 1, 2005... Control Microsystems new ClearSCADA SCADA management software is designed to address the electric power industry's toughest challenges, including service interruptions, power quality and data auditing. ClearSCADA is a premium automation...

Semi-rugged notebook computer.(NEW PRODUCTS)
September 1, 2005... The new GoBook VR-1 from Itronix builds on the company's family of fully rugged, wireless notebooks, handhelds and tablet PCs. With support for up to four separate wireless options--including GPS--the GoBook VR-1 enables mobile users to remain...

Calendar.(Calendar)
September 1, 2005... DistribuTECH 2006: The utility industry's most comprehensive conference on automation, information technology and T & D engineering Feb. 7-9, 2006. Tampa, Fla. // Phone 918.831.9443 // Fax 918.831.9875 // Website www.distributech.com ...