A Single Solution for All Utility Departments
SmartSub meets a broad range of requirements throughout the power delivery chain while integrating seamlessly with existing systems. It enables utilities to take advantage of all existing corporate equipment and infrastructures, including the Internet, to minimize up-front and ongoing costs. By collecting data at strategic gateway sites and aggregating it at a central location, SmartSub is in the unique position to optimize information flow to all utility departments, including:
- Operations
- System Protection
- Distribution Reliability
- Power Quality
- Substation Maintenance
- Construction and Planning
- Customer Service
Operations
With SmartSub, operations can gain rapid insights into why events are happening and what can be done to operate more reliably. SmartSub provides automated near-real-time analysis of system events that direct actions taken by operations. What's more, for utilities that employ wide-area and local-area networks, non-operational data can be accessed in real time. SmartSub's fault analysis can ensure that correct decisions are made regarding the operation of critical equipment. This translates into shorter restoration times and more efficient crew deployment.
System Protection
SmartSub automatically collects fault data and delivers fault reports via e-mail or the Internet. These reports are enhanced with custom calculations that can detect protection and apparatus problems such as breaker restriking, recloser misoperations, LTC failures, and improperly cleared faults. Further customization enables utility-specific calculations and the correlation with other monitors and data sources, such as the correlation of lightning and weather data to a specific fault.
Distribution Reliability
Data from monitors at substations and customer sites can be analyzed and compared to identify problem circuits. Integrated reliability reporting features allow results to be compiled and communicated easily to management and utility commissions. Correlation of data helps to ensure that the source and impact of reliability events are automatically verified.
Power Quality
Expert power quality reports are automatically generated after a power quality event. An Internet interface provides energy service engineers and customers with up-to-the-minute expert analysis of the source and impact of power quality events.
Substation Maintenance
SmartSub gathers equipment-operating conditions and correlates this data to system events. This enables efficient and timely maintenance procedures to be scheduled for equipment that is likely to fail. Equipment status can be routed to your company's asset management system for true condition-based maintenance. For example, SmartSub tracks harmonics, load swings, phase imbalances, through-faults, and other events and correlates them with other data such as temperature trends and DGA data to predict transformer failure probabilities.
Construction and Planning
The cost of infrastructure upgrades and capacity expansion is a substantial expense for utilities. SmartSub gives utility planning and project engineering teams easy access to historical circuit reliability and loading information that previously was difficult to access. This new information helps to forecast and prioritize infrastructure investments and prevent unnecessary capital expenditures.
Customer Service
Utility marketing and energy services groups can provide customers with Internet access to their energy use, cost, and power quality information—and more importantly, their trends. Used as a revenue-producing service or to retain and attract customers, SmartSub can provide key customers with the information they need to help reduce costs and increase uptime. If the "customer" is internal, SmartSub provides an avenue to disperse information with varying levels of access over corporate intranets.