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Electric Energy T&D - Index

Electric Energy T&D - EEMag March / April 2008 - Index

Circle 48 on Reader Service Card
Linking Control Center-Based Systems to
the Enterprise:
Linkage to other utility enterprise systems
continued to be on the increase, despite
concerns for “optimizing security via
‘isolation’” with the key to secure control
center operations based on limiting links to
non-real-time access via periodic downloads to
authorized requestors or indirect access to and
from the control system via historian files.
The most frequently mentioned plans for
additional links this year from control center
systems were reported as: NERC compliance
reporting systems; outage management
systems; geographic information systems and
customer information systems.
Outage Management Systems
A majority of large and mid-size North
American electric utilities now operate outage
management systems (OMS) separately from
their SCADA system. About 15% indicated
that their outage management applications
would remain integral to their SCADA or
distribution management system (DMS).
Some reported home-grown OMS capabilities
are still limited to “trouble ticket tracking”.
System Reliability Issues Leading to Action
System reliability issues are being addressed
by public service commissions throughout
North America. The adoption of performancebased
or penalty-based rate structures is
still not widespread, but these are available
in some of the most populous states and
provinces.
Increased Spending on Energy Management and
SCADA Systems Upgrades
Much of the industry’s increase in spending
for control systems-related developments over
the most recent two years and planned for
8 I March-April 2008 Issue
the next two years has been as a direct result
of regulatory involvement at the federal and
state/provincial level. Regulatory concerns
have resulted in adoption of programs for
renewable energy (renewable portfolio
standards), automated metering (advanced
metering infrastructure) rate structures,
demand response and the like. Each of these
in turn can be considered as components of
the embryonic “smart grid” as much as can
utility efforts aimed at developing distribution
network automation, linking geographic
information systems to outage management
systems, asset management applications and
SCADA activities.
More information regarding the ongoing
Newton-Evans Research four volume
series entitled: Worldwide Market Study of
Energy Management Systems, SCADA and
Distribution Management Systems in Electric
Utilities: 2008-2010 is available here:
lforrest@newton-evans.com or eleivo@newtonevans.com
or visit www.newton-evans.com.
circle 60 on Reader Service card
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Novinium Completes First Phase
Of Long Submarine Crossing
Rejuvenation
Novinium has successfully completed the first
phase of a long submarine cable rejuvenation
project for BC Hydro utilizing its patent
pending N-REX™ cable injection process for
long submarine cables.
The BC Hydro project is a 4.4 km submarine
crossing in a remote part of British Columbia
running from Sarah Point on the mainland to
Cortes Island. On this submarine crossing
there are four individual cables: two PILC
cables and two 1/0 XLPE compact strand
cables. They were installed in 1981 and are
the only source of power for Cortes Island, an
island about 160 km northwest of Vancouver,
British Columbia.
Since these XLPE cables were nearing the
end of their expected life, BC Hydro wanted
to preemptively rejuvenate these cables and
not have to bear the cost of replacement.