Circuit Breaker Lubrication
Developing circuit breaker lubrication procedures BY RICK YOUNGBLOOD, Doble Engineering Company Circuit breaker analyzers are used to determine operating speeds and velocity. This information enables...
View ArticleCircuit Breaker Time and Motion Testing
Determining mechanical condition of high-voltage circuit breakers BY JOZEF LEVI, Doble Engineering Company Life expectancy of a newly installed high-voltage circuit breaker is approximately 40 years....
View ArticlePartial Discharge & Circuit Breaker Asset Management
Detecting and avoiding preventable failures BY JAY GARNETT, Doble Engineering Company While metal clad switchgear can be very reliable, sometimes operating for over 50 years, throughout the aging...
View ArticleFlame-Resistant Clothing Misconceptions
Misconceptions about using flame-resistant clothing BY DAN BONELLI, Cintas Corporation According to Michael Hyland, chair of the National Electrical Safety Code (NESC) and vice president of engineering...
View ArticleProtecting Substations Against Animal Invaders
A closer look at animal-caused outages at substations BY BILL REICHARD, TransGard Systems Every year, squirrels, raccoons, snakes, and other climbing animals cause substation outages across North...
View ArticleSubstation Security
Improve protection with a layered security approach BY ERIC BYRES, Belden Inc. An age-old joke in the North American power industry states that if Alexander Graham Bell walked in the room today, he...
View ArticleSubstation Maintenance Best Practices
Improving substation maintenance best practices for greater success BY BUDO MILOVIC, DV-Power Currently, substation maintenance—regular or emergency—operations and best practices must fit the utility’s...
View ArticleSafe Grounding in Substations
How to guard utility personnel from shock hazards BY JEFF JOWETT, Megger In the power industry, safety is just as important a function as performance. Safety considerations, parameters, and methods of...
View ArticleGrounding System Maintenance Guide
Grounding systems are a crucially important component of any power supply system, because they directly impact public and employee safety, supply system reliability, power quality and life expectancy...
View ArticleEthernet Cable Selection for Utilities
Electric utilities are constantly searching for the most efficient, reliable and cost-effective methods to deliver electricity to customers. A vision for accomplishing this is the migration of the...
View ArticleIntegrated Security Operations Centers (ISOC)
The watchdog of electrical assets BY RALPH KING, Electric Power Research Institute Security operations centers (SOCs) are common in corporate information technology (IT), physical security, and...
View ArticleProtective Relay Frustrations
Solving misoperation with line parameter measurements BY WILL KNAPEK, OMICRON USA Between 80 to 90 percent of all power system faults involve ground. Many protective relaying schemes depend on ground...
View ArticleDeterrence Drives Next Gen Security
Theft, destruction, disablement, vandalism, and terrorism: any of the aforementioned words receive the attention of organizations with susceptible critical assets. Physical security and its costs,...
View ArticleGeomagnetic Disturbances: A Danger to the Power Grid
In 1989, the Québec grid collapsed as equipment protection relays tripped in a cascading sequence of events. Six million consumers were left without power for up to nine hours. The cause of this major...
View ArticleTransmission Planning for Grid Security
Recent physical attacks on substations have heightened the industry’s awareness of the necessity for physical security of critical facilities on the bulk power system. The goal of the North American...
View ArticleThe Copper Theft Pandemic
Around the time of the financial crisis of 2008, precious metals pricing began to change drastically. Beginning in late 2007, a trend of price instability began to be seen for gold, silver, platinum,...
View ArticleEnsuring Compliance vs Building Resilience
The realization that the vast majority of substations have significant security vulnerabilities was crystalized after the Metcalf incident of April 2013, during which unknown assailants caused the...
View ArticleProperly Grounded Substations
Adequate utility grounding improves power quality, but more importantly, it is essential for worker safety as well as public protection. Design is critical in maintaining a safe equipotential...
View ArticleTHE DIGITAL SUBSTATION UTOPIA
Electric utilities have long considered digital substations an insubstantial concept: an ideal vision of all-knowing substations networked into an intelligent grid. However, technological innovations...
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New data suggests real-time pricing can help customers save money
Most utility customers now pay an average price for electricity that changes little (if at all) over the course of the year. Average, flat-rate, real-time pricing is akin to a form of insurance, where...
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