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Lightning Protection


Lightning Strikes

In Canada, lightning flashes occur about 2.34 million times a year; with the highest levels of concentration during the summer months. While most lightning on earth is ground-to-cloud,  recent research has identified that the majority of lightning events to tall structures, such as wind...

Substation Automation


The Digital Substation Vision: From Utopian Concept to Grid Backbone

A digital substation is a modernized electrical substation that replaces traditional analog equipment and copper wiring with digital signaling, intelligent electronic devices (IEDs), and fiber-optic communication. It enables real-time data exchange, advanced automation, and greater efficiency in...

Breakers & Relays


Storm-Hardened Switchgear

How to protect electrical equipment from Mother Nature BY ROBERT A. MURPHY, Trayer Engineering Corporation The U.S. National Weather Service called Hurricane Sandy the most destructive storm of 2012’s unusually active Atlantic hurricane season. Sandy delivered unprecedented damage across a wide...

Substation Technologies


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...

Substation Protection


Selecting Substation Medium-Voltage Switchgear: GIS vs. AIS

Understanding differences between GIS and AIS in five points BY GAETAN DJENANE, Schneider Electric, Inc. Many considerations must be taken into account before selecting the electrical medium-voltage (MV) switchgear that best meets a user’s needs. From a management perspective,...

Substation Testing & Maintenance


Electrical Substations

Properly 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 environment all around the substation.

Construction is important to accommodate fault currents without leaving the substation with dangerous potential gradients.

A tester must establish a sufficiently low resistance to remote earth so that operation remains within safe parameters. Similarly, safe step and touch potentials must be...

Electrical Substations Articles