Electrical Substations

Lightning Protection

Grounding 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 of power equipment. In spite of their crucial role in safe, reliable, and economic operation of...

Substation Technologies

Power Factor Testing of Circuit Breakers

Detecting contamination and deterioration in SF6 breakers to ensure longevity BY LINDA NOWAK, Doble Engineering Company The purpose of “Doble testing”, or power factor testing, SF6 (sulfur hexafluoride) circuit breakers is to detect the presence of contamination and/or deterioration of the...

Physical Security & Monitoring

Current Trends in Transmission and Distribution

Sargent & Lundy has provided comprehensive engineering, development, permitting, high-level consulting, construction management, and commissioning services for electric power generation and power delivery projects worldwide—approximately 2,000 clients in nearly 100 countries—since...

Substation Testing & Maintenance

IR Inspection Windows for Electrical System Reliability

An Infrared Inspection Window is used to separate environments of differing pressures or temperatures while allowing light energy at a specified electromagnetic wavelength to pass between the two environments. They must meet the strength and environmental requirements for the type of equipment in...

Breakers & Relays

Reconditioned SF₆ Gas: An Environmentally Friendly Alternative

When it comes to medium and high voltage circuit breakers, there is no better electrical insulator than sulfur hexafluoride (SF6). The manufactured gas is most commonly used to fill circuit breakers within utility substations to prevent and quench arcing events. SF6's impeccable dielectric...

Substation Protection

SCADA for Substations

How new technologies can improve monitoring and control BY LOURENCO TEODORO, InduSoft Substations are a critical component for maintaining electrical supply and load control in low voltage, medium voltage and high voltage electrical distribution networks. In order to ensure the proper functioning...

Home Transformation Electrical Substations

Animal Mitigation for Electric Utilities

Prevent animal- and bird-caused outages to improve reliability

BY MARTY NILES, Cantega Technologies

Utilities in North America are under enormous pressure from regulators, customers, and investors to improve reliability performance. Many of the mergers and acquisitions of utilities around North America are being conditioned on how combining two or more companies would improve statistics from utility indexes and indicators including SAIFI (System Average Interruption Frequency Index), SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index) and CAIDI (Customer...