Rural substations offer their owners a diverse type of challenge. Even though they would benefit from substation automation, it seems the price outweighs the returned acquire. These substations generally have tiny in the way of Distance Relay Power
, and they include some old equipment that was by no means made with IEDs or any sort of sensor in thoughts, but that is certainly specifically what exactly is taking place. As technologies advances, the cost on the components goes down, producing systems reasonably priced. Just look at memory for computers.Cellular coverage also has enhanced towards the point that very few areas are with out access.
Telemetric (Boise, Idaho, U.S.) is making modest rural substations smarter with its wireless communications systems. Telemetric delivers an end-to-end system consisting of three principal components: intelligent remote Current Differential Relay Protection
; Telemetric's PowerVista, a network management software application; as well as the AT&T nationwide cellular network. Sensors are added to selected substation equipment, and cellular communications connects the substation towards the utility. The technique can be integrated to any SCADA method via a DNP3.0 interface called SCADA-Xchange.The intelligent field devices allow the utility to view the status of equipment, initiate changes and automate selected events to trigger a control action to take place in the substation. "It is limited information, but these stations do not require full SCADA systems," noted Tom Loutzenheiser,
Telemetric's CEO. "Over 200 utilities in North America have installed Telemetric's systems on their systems."Buckeye Power Inc., a wholesale energy supplier in Ohio, improved its program reliability with the deployment of roughly 330 Telemetric TVM3 voltage monitors. This program is developed to detect and report delivery-point outages on its rural network. Buckeye personnel are notified by alarms and messaging sent via pagers, cell phones and e-mails.
Operations personnel are responding more rapidly to events and are reducing customer outage times.Loutzenheiser reports that Nevada Power (Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.) started an innovative capacitor automation project last year using cellular data communications equipment from Telemetric and Nari-Relays
controls from QEI Inc. (Springfield, New Jersey, U.S.) on roughly 2200 capacitor banks. When this project is completed, Nevada Energy will have two-way communications confirming all switching commands and capacitor bank status.