Energy Biz - July/August 2008 - (Page 38) L eAdership roundtAbL es Senior operating officerS To us, that is very much a customer dependent consideration. If we have a customer in our system that would require such a high reliability level that they would come to us and say, “We must have this type of reliability,” then we would pursue it. I do not know that we would pursue it without having the request brought to us. linahan We put in automatic transfer switches if the customer requests it and we’re capable of doing it. The first run is usually easy, the second one a little bit more difficult, and the nth one is not always available, and that is one of the big issues. When you’re looking at planning your capacity, all of a sudden if you lose a feeder and maybe you have a big load that transfers to another one, you could burn down your circuit, so it’s a little bit of an operating problem. So we don’t want to get into automated switching too much. We normally have about 185 outages a year, and most of them are individual homes that one person, a lineman, can go out and take care of. Very seldom do we have a e ades TO INTRODUCE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND TO HAVE THE SYSTEM OPERATE ITSELF IS A PLACE THAT WE’RE TRYING TO GO. 38 e n e rgyb i z feeder issue, and when Director, ComEd you look at adding Oakbrook Terrace, Ill. all this stuff it’s a lot terry Varn of resources. You’re Manager, Transmission Region talking about lots of Operations, Technical Support, American Electric Power bucks. When you’re Columbus, Ohio looking at self-healing, you’re looking at a lot rayMOnd rauber of cost, you’re looking Vice President of Engineering & Operations, Enersource at requiring a pretty Mississauga, Canada good engineer to be in tune with all that stuff, JacOb chackO and what happens if he Director, Business Operations, Xcel Energy leaves? Minneapolis, Minn. daschbach We’re in the Baltimorekerry teetOr Manager of Operations, Washington corridor, Dawson Public Power and we have a large Lexington, Neb. customer base that is either government brian daschbach Senior Vice President, agencies or contracIntegrated Field Services, BgE tors that support the Baltimore, Md. defense community. rObert linahan The idea of duplicate general Manager, feeds and automatic Springfield Utility Board changeover is very Springfield, Ore. commonplace for Mark eades us, so we have many Chief Operations Officer, customers with two Johnson City Power Board feeds from different Johnson City, Tenn. sources and a changeover at their location. Our service operators, our fi rst responding linemen, are skilled at dealing with those issues when it comes down to putting the system back to normal again. To introduce artificial intelligence and to have the system operate itself is a place that we’re trying to go. But frankly, we’ve had communications difficulties between those units trying to talk to each other and come up with a safe and reliable scheme. Feeder-level automation is still pretty control-room based. We’re just sort of teetering. We’re looking at having artificial intelligence doing the feeder-level switching. teetOr Our customers mainly are rural. We do have two ethanol plants on our transmission system that Miguel Ortega July/August 2008
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