Electrical Substations

Substation Technologies

Grid-Scale Battery Storage Systems and Their Impact on Substation Operations

The transition to renewable energy is reshaping the power landscape, with grid-scale battery storage systems playing a pivotal role in this transformation. These systems are crucial for balancing supply and demand, particularly at the substation level, where they enhance grid stability and...

Breakers & Relays

Partial 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 process, this group of electrical disconnect switches, fuses and circuit breakers can experience...

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 Testing & Maintenance

The SorbWeb™ Plus DRH4 Synergy

If you have oil-filled transformers, the law requires you to have a spill prevention plan in place, up to and including a secondary containment system to protect the environment and prevent oil from reaching navigable waters. Albarrie and Voltra Technology have partnered up to provide the power...

Substation Protection

Smart Transformers: Enhancing Grid Efficiency and Reliability

The evolving demands of modern power grids necessitate the adoption of advanced technologies that can provide enhanced efficiency, reliability, and flexibility. Smart transformers are at the forefront of this technological revolution, offering a range of capabilities that significantly improve the...

Physical Security & Monitoring

The 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, and (although not a precious metal in the traditional sense), copper. The price of all these metals...

Home Transformation Electrical Substations

Ethernet 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 electrical grid from a reliable, but inflexible system to the Smart Grid, which promises adaptability and efficiency.

One definition of the Smart Grid, based on work from the U.S. Department of Energy, is: "A modernized electrical grid that uses information and communications technology to gather and act on information in an automated fashion…to improve the efficiency, reliability, economics, and sustainability of the production and distribution of electricity".

The promises of the Smart Grid are exciting on many fronts...