Category: Smart Grid

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Companies Announce New Residential Virtual Power Plant for California

distributed-power

(PowerMag) – A distributed energy power plant, designed to help bring more reliability to California’s power grid, is being developed by a company whose investors include Alphabet, the parent company of Google. The project when fully developed would be the world’s largest residential virtual power plant (VPP).

Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP), a group that builds, owns, operates, and invests in advanced infrastructure projects and technology companies, on Dec. 7 released details of a $100 million deal as part of Resilia, the company’s new advanced power grid platform. The agreement includes an $80 million commitment to finance the 550-MW Resi-Station project, along with a $20 million investment in OhmConnect, a partner in the VPP.

Growth of VPP installations has accelerated, particularly in areas that have sustained rolling blackouts and power outages. A project in South Australia, with Tesla taking a lead role, was touted as the world’s largest VPP when development began in 2018.   

OhmConnect is a demand response and energy services technology company that works with residential electricity customers to predict, incentivize, and coordinate consumer energy savings. Resi-Station is expected to bring together thousands of electricity customers with in-home smart devices that can deliver targeted energy reductions supported by OhmConnect’s technology, according to SIP. The project’s investors also include the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, based in Toronto, Canada, which has long been a financial supporter of institutional infrastructure projects.

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AEP Continues Its Efforts Into the Power of Augmented Reality (AR)

American-Electric-Power

As AEP continues to roll out augmented reality (AR) within their distribution and transmission organizations, they are beginning to realize the benefits of this transformative technology.

AR allows AEP foresters to see what trees are impacted and pose risks under a variety of potential weather conditions against the backdrop of the real world. It also improves the ways AEP distribution engineering technicians interact with customers in the field by showing them how designed lines would look on their property. In this live webinar, experts will discuss practical AR distribution and transmission applications and use cases being used at AEP to enhance interaction with customers, validate overhead and underground line designs, and mitigate clashes with structures.

See other information on VR Systems by 3 Phase Associates…

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IEEE PES Chattanooga Section Hosting Virtual STATCOM Seminar

Chattanooga-IEEE

The Chattanooga Section of IEEE was established in 1963 with the formation of IEEE, the Section has a history as old as IEEE itself. The Section exists to connect and support local professionals and students in science and engineering through networking opportunities, technical talks, and social events. The Chattanooga Section covers the following Tennessee counties: Bledsoe, Bradley, Hamilton, Marion, McMinn, Meigs, Monroe, Polk, Rhea, and Sequatchie. 

The Chattanooga and East TN chapters are looking at organizing a half-day workshop on STATCOMs for renewable applications and feeder STATCOM for smaller renewables and flicker mitigation as part of the IEEE PES Chattanooga Chapter. The workshop would last approximately 2-3 hours. If there is enough interest from members, the workshop would be scheduled for early 2021. 

Please see the link below to a survey and let us know if you would attend the workshop.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VCNVF3Q

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Cybersecurity Considerations for Power Substation SCADA Systems Using IEC-61850 Communications

Electrical-Substation
When including security controls into a SCADA system design, it is sometimes difficult to separate design
goals from security requirements. The foremost goal for a SCADA system is to provide protection,
automation, and data acquisition. This paper discusses major
vulnerabilities and cybersecurity considerations that require proper analysis when designing and
implementing a secure IEC-61850 standard-based SCADA system within a power substation. 
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Securing Legacy SCADA Systems Against Cyber Threats

SCADA-image

There are numerous cyber threats and vulnerabilities announced almost daily with warnings across this country directed at our energy and critical infrastructure sectors from various organizations, such as: FBI, DHS, NSA, DOD, DOE, FERC, NERC, CISA, USCYBERCOM, and many more… These warnings have been directed specifically towards the power utility sector as being very vulnerable towards future cyber threats.

For the electric power industry and other service sectors, Supervisory Control & Data Acquisition (SCADA) has performed a crucial role by allowing better decision making through operating, controlling, monitoring and maintaining critical control systems.
With Smart Grid (SG) and Distributed Generation (DG) gaining more popularity results in more 3rd party stakeholders demanding access to utilities’ SCADA system. Some utility SCADA systems are older legacy systems that are in dire need of replacing in order to have:  a more secure system, access to the latest vendor security patch updates, and to allow for better functionality, etc.
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One Utility That Implemented Smart Grid to Improve Electric Reliability and Much More

Chatt-EPB
Electric power has evolved from a simple need to a major necessity. Everyday we rely more and more on electricity to do just about everything. When the lights go out, its not just a major inconvenience, but a catastrophe in some cases. A major focus for power distribution utilities is to deliver reliable power to its customers safely and at the lowest possible cost.
Newer state-of-the-art, digital devices are making it possible to achieve near perfect power reliability while offering more monitoring and control functionality of electric grids. Smarter grids are evolving with improved and faster automation systems, working in harmony with: IEDs, SCADA, FLISR, AMI, AMR, DMS, EMS, OMS, etc.

Chattanooga Electric Power Board (EPB) is one utility that has led the way in this effort.

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