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Electric Energy T&D - Index

Electric Energy T&D - EEMag May June 2008 - Index

going to be before you head out to the grocery store. Once you get
there you do your best to buy good stuff at reasonable prices, but
then when you get back home you discover that liver and chocolate
syrup don’t really go together very well – even though both ingredients
were good brands on sale at very good prices.
So here we are – some 0-30 years later – with the world’s most
eclectic potluck dinner when it comes to automation/IT platforms.
Smaller utilities may have it in smaller portions because their
appetites and resources are modest. Oh, and big utilities? Well,
they have a veritable smorgasbord of potluck for any occasion. Okay,
enough with the food analogies… what I’m really trying to say is this:
1. Attention Utilities: You got your wish; the systems all talk now,
and better yet, they actually understand each other! Let’s face it,
you can’t stop Baby-boomers from retiring, and you surely cannot
replace your entire (now rapidly deteriorating) infrastructure
overnight, so do what you CAN do by using the myriad automation
tools readily available to mitigate the problems you can’t fix any
other way. It might not be free, but it is available.
. SGI is NOT going to be a panacea for anything, much less
everything. In fact, it’s going to be a huge and very expensive
undertaking that a lot of you reading this probably won’t even be
around to see completed.
3. And by the way, where is all of this investment going to come
from? Historically, it’s been pretty doggone hard to get even
relatively modest automation/IT projects justified, even those with
14 I May-June 2008 Issue
4.
5.
Utility Horizons TM
a reasonably attractive ROI. But more comprehensive projects can
have better economies of scale and also tend to get better support
from the top when properly conceived.
Yes, you’re starting anew, but let’s learn from what has come
before. Specifically, we need to start taking the longer – holistic
– view of critical automation and infrastructure investments.
And finally – like it or not – a new 30-50 year life cycle starts
every time you procure an asset and/or a system to monitor and
control that asset, so let’s include the automation on the front end
now instead of making your successors scramble to find out how
much life is left the next time around. (Yeah, I realize that there’s
a certain poetic just to that, but let’s not go there.) j
Behind the Byline
Mike Marullo has been active in the automation, controls and
instrumentation field for more than 35 years and is a widely published
author of numerous technical articles, industry directories and market
research reports. An independent consultant since 1984, he is co-founder
and Director of Research & Consulting for InfoNetrix LLC, a New Orleansbased
market inteligence firm focused on Utility Automation and IT markets.
Inquiries or comments about this column may be directed to Mike at
MAM@InfoNetrix.com.
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