TULSA, Okla., Feb. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- The editors of Utility Automation & Engineering T&D magazine and PennWell Corp. have announced four winners for the magazine's annual Projects of the Year Awards program.
The winners were selected for four specific categories: Best Transmission and Distribution (T&D) Automation Project, Best Non-automated T&D Engineering Project, Best Geographic Information System (GIS) Project and Best Automated Meter Reading/Advance Metering Infrastructure (AMR/AMI) Project.
The awards were given out today during the keynote presentation at the DistribuTECH 2009 conference in San Diego.
For more details on these award winners, see the March issue of Utility Automation & Engineering T&D magazine.
Best T&D Automation Project
The winner of the T&D Automation Project of the Year Award is Commonwealth Edison for the company's real-time fault indication project.
More than 50 years ago utilities learned the value of fault circuit indicators to aid in time consuming outage location. In late 2006, Commonwealth Edison, or ComEd, decided to look into state-of-the-art improvements for the process.
The utility believed that overhead fault indicators with communications capabilities would result in a smarter grid and improved metrics through remote reporting by each fault indicating device. Sponsored by the GridApp Consortium, ComEd, Landis+Gyr, DC Systems and SEL began work on the fault indicator solution. ComEd engineers spent January and February 2008 introducing the fault indicator to the trouble crews and training them on the device's installation and operation. Installation of fault indicators themselves began in March 2008.
Besides responding to faults, the indicators also provide average hourly loads, ambient temperatures and historical outage related information which can be stored in historian files for future analysis. Fast and easy to install and a good foundation for smart grid technologies, ComEd believes this project is one that other utilities will be able to replicate, tailoring the specific technologies to each utility's unique distribution system.
Best Non-automated T&D Engineering Project
The winner of the Non-automated T&D Engineering Project of the Year Award is Northeast Utilities for the Middletown-Norwalk transmission project.
The Middletown-Norwalk Transmission Project is one of the largest electric infrastructure upgrades in the United States and marks a major milestone by Northeast Utilities to solve the chronic problem of congestion in southwestern Connecticut.
Estimated to cost a bit over one billion dollars, the project consists of 69 miles of 345-kilovolt high-voltage transmission lines through 18 Connecticut cities and towns. Construction included 45 miles of overhead lines and 24 miles of underground lines, along with 57 miles of reconstructed 115-kilovolt lines to facilitate installation of 345-kilovolt lines on existing rights-of-way.
The Middletown-Norwalk project completes a loop connecting the southwest part of the state to the nearly 400 miles of 345-kV transmission lines that already run through the rest of Connecticut. By providing this access, the project relieves congestion, strengthens reliability and provides Connecticut power consumers additional savings in federal congestion costs.
Best GIS Project
The winner of the GIS Project of the Year Award is our gracious DistribuTECH host utility this year, San Diego Gas & Electric, for the Virtual Integrated Situational Awareness (VISA) project.
This year, SDG&E initiated a project that combined a host of data from wildfires, lightning strikes, earthquakes, wind forecasts and SCADA data to provide a real-time situational awareness dashboard for visualization in the control room and board room alike.
The idea came after SDG&E experienced the San Diego wildfires in October 2007. During those devastating wildfires, SDG&E activated the EOC--the Emergency Operations Center--in which all key representatives from the company come together to monitor events, communicate and make decisions. Trying to get current, real-time information in the right form and context, however, was virtually impossible. In many instances, the EOC had to cobble together information gathered by a variety of sources--phone, fax and e-mail.
Today, with the new geospatial visualization, the EOC representatives and executives can view the system condition on-demand, eliminating the extra step of asking for updates. The implementation went live with fully-integrated visualization in September 2008. By October 2008, SDG&E had hundreds of users across the company, including the vice president of transmission and distribution, viewing the project daily from the desktop and revolutionizing how outage and restoration information is distributed.
Best AMR/AMI Project
The winner of the AMR/AMI Project of the Year Award is the City of San Marcos, Texas for the municipality's city-wide AMI update.
The City of San Marcos Texas, a community-owned water/wastewater and electric system with 19,500 electric customers, is in the process of implementing an AMI project of 30,000 commercial, industrial and residential meters. The AMI solution leverages the capabilities of a smart mesh technology and will enable smart meter communications directly to and from the City's utility office.
Demand response capabilities will also be implemented, allowing city residents to track their electric use on the Web at any time. With the versatile EkaNet-enabled meters, the City has already been able to detect service outages and other energy-related problems more quickly, resulting in faster service response times and proving that you don't have to be a big investor-owned utility to be a smart technology pioneer.
Deployment of the AMI solution began in July 2008. The pilot program allowed the City to test the system and train all appropriate personnel. The City of San Marcos expects to rapidly deploy the system within all utility service areas in the first half of this year in the race to become the first fully integrated "Smart City" in Texas, if not the country.
About Utility Automation and Engineering T&D
Utility Automation & Engineering T&D magazine is the voice of the electric T&D industry. More than 35,000 T&D professionals read Utility Automation and Engineering T&D magazine for expert coverage of the industry's important news and emerging trends. The magazine and DistribuTECH are owned by PennWell Corp., a worldwide media company based in Tulsa, Okla.
About PennWell
PennWell Corporation is a diversified business-to-business media and information company that provides quality content and integrated marketing solutions for the following industries: oil and gas, electric power, water and wastewater, renewable, electronics, semiconductor, contamination control, optoelectronics, fiberoptics, enterprise storage, converting, nanotechnology, fire, emergency services and dental. Founded in 1910, PennWell publishes over 100 print and online magazines and newsletters, conducts 60 conferences and exhibitions on six continents, and has an extensive offering of books, maps, web sites, research and database services. In addition to PennWell's headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma the Company has major offices in Nashua, New Hampshire; Houston, Texas; London, England; Mountain View, California; Fairlawn, New Jersey, Moscow, Russia, and Hong Kong, China.
For more information, contact:
Kathleen Davis, Senior Editor
+1 918-832-9269
kathleend@pennwell.com
www.utilityautomation.com
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