Lightning Protection and Impact on Electric System Reliability

Figure 1: US Lightning Patterns Most of the lightning-prone area in the United States tends to be in the far southeast. The figure presents the map of the continental United States displaying isokeraunic contours (lines of equal lightning activity per year). Clearly, the most significant occurrences for lightning is in the southeast ( with levels ranging between 80 and 100), but even in areas...

Distribution Line Losses

Distribution Line Losses (By Voltage) Distribution line losses are often a significant cost to an electric utility and thus to the energy consumer in its cost-of-service rate regime. Consequently, each electric utility is continuously exploring ways to improve efficiency (through reducing these losses) across its networks by: Reducing Transformation – Voltage transformation inherently produces...

Energy Utilities Approaches to Grid Modernization

Successful Grid Modernization Programs There are a number of energy utilities that have adopted a holistic approach to Grid Modernization that ensures the network is properly refurbished and hardened, thus ensuring that the full benefits of SmartGrid (e.g. grid automation) are realized by the vast majority of their customers. In so doing, these utilities have been able to meet the near-term...

Electric Distribution – System Hardening and Modernization

Hardening and modernizing the electrical distribution system for any utility involve a number of related, yet separate actions. These actions are typically tied to: Effecting Repairs and Replacement, Improving Reliability, Meeting Load Projections and Modernizing the Grid Most of these actions are already incorporated in existing energy delivery operating plans, but typically in an incremental...

Distribution Automation – The Key to Achieving Top-Quartile Smart Grid Reliability

The electric utility industry has envisioned distribution automation in one form or another since the early 1980s. With recent improvements to communications technology (particularly cellular telephone/data, GPS satellites, power line carrier, and fiber optic cable technologies) that vision is rapidly becoming a reality, and, in fact, a virtual necessity, as customers have come to expect...

Expected Results and Benefits from Grid Modernization (Including SmartGrid and AMI)

Grid Modernization: Electric Infrastructure with SmartGrid and AMI Most electric customers and other stakeholders are keenly aware of the vast innovations, improvements, and cost reductions that have occurred in their telecommunications networks and they clearly recognize the benefits they have realized from them. In contrast, few customers and other stakeholders recognize the potential for...

Driving Forces behind Grid Modernization (Including Smart Grids and AMI)

There are numerous internal (i.e. to the utility, its customers, and the regulatory regime) and external (i.e. societal and technological) forces that have established a compelling need for grid modernization, and understanding these forces is central to understanding why modernization is a vital topic for each electric utility, its customers, and all its stakeholders. Forces Driving Grid...

Electric Distribution Feeder Backbone Protection

Analyses of electric distribution systems repeatedly verify that the most immediate and cost-effective strategy for improving an electric utility’s distribution circuit reliability is protection of  the feeder backbone. The feeder backbone, also referred to as the mainline, main gut, or feeder (though the latter term sometimes refers to the whole circuit), is usually the three-phase part of...

Service Restoration in Storm Conditions

Some of the major insights of leading electric utilities regarding service restoration in storm conditions is the considerable benefit that can accrue to early mobilization of field personnel. Although these benefits must be weighed against the cost of mobilizing resources for a “false alarm” (e.g. a storm that does not hit or does less damage than that forecast), the pendulum is swinging...

Grid Modernization- The Path to Full Network Automation

Current priorities placed on Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and SmartGrid technologies at the highes levels of state and federal government are creating compelling pressure on every utility to commit significant investment to such initiatives. But the path to success involves a plan that integrates myriad of factors, including: Electric Grid Modernization Broad array of developed and...