The one-day-in-10-years criterion might have lost its usefulness in today’s energy markets. The criterion is highly conservative when used in calculating reserve margins for reliability. Can the...
and GE smart meters.
Alstom’s smart grid demonstration was among five projects selected by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu to receive $6 million in federal funding aimed at optimizing the U.S. electric grid with smart grid technologies. The Alstom Grid (formerly Areva T&D) demonstration project was designed to efficiently integrate distributed energy resources into the electric grid. Its objective is to help the DOE reach its smart grid targets for 2030. Alstom says the project will be implemented with several partners, including Duke Energy, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the University of Washington and the University of Connecticut.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) also awarded On-Ramp Wireless a smart grid technology grant, to utilize On-Ramp’s Ultra—Link Processing (ULP) wireless communication system to develop and demonstrate a wireless grid sensor and faulted circuit indicator capable of monitoring underground systems. On-Ramp says it successfully demonstrated the ability to connect wireless sensors throughout the distribution grid in a field test with Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL) in July 2010, and will conduct the project on in partnership with two Western utilities.
CenterPoint Energy Houston Electric selected ABB for its intelligent grid advanced distribution management system (ADMS). Using ABB’s Network Manager, the ADMS will process data from power line sensors and smart electric meters to identify the location of power outages and remotely control intelligent grid switching devices to shorten the duration of power outages. Phase 1 is expected to be completed in 2013 and will cover more than half a million Houstonians.
Cooper Power Systems introduced the SMP 4/DP, a more advanced automation and integration platform of the SMP line of distribution processors. Cooper says its latest communication gateway product provides utilities with secure and reliable data acquisition and management.
Burbank Water and Power (BWP) selected Tropos Networks as part of the municipal utility’s smart grid network. Tropos’GridCom architecture will be used in the city’s wireless distribution area network, providing connectivity for multiple utility smart grid applications. BWP’s smart grid investment is estimated at $62 million with rollout planned over the next three years. The program is funded by BWP and a $20 million U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) smart grid investment grant (SGIG). BWP recently completed its smart grid proof of concept phase that includes 900 advanced meter infrastructure (AMI) meters, portions of the Tropos GridCom network, a meter data management system (MDMS) and an outage management system (OMS).
Survalent Technology installed a new SCADA system for Pearl River Valley Electric Power Association. Survalent says the open-architecture system, based on Windows Server 2008, incorporates numerous applications, including: command sequencing, event data recorder, remote alarm, fault data recorder, and MultiSpeak interfaces for engineering analysis, outage analysis, AMI, load management, and GIS.