Steve Quinn cut his teeth, not in power delivery, but in nuclear and fossil generation. When Quinn moved into T&D, he brought with him a passion to leverage data into knowledge and knowledge into optimal maintenance decisions. Quinn acknowledges that the industry still has a way to go. He realizes we need to better understand the impact of individual maintenance decisions on the overall efficiency and reliability of the network. He also looks to individuals for solutions, expounding on the need for creative individuals with an innate understanding of how T&D works. Today, Quinn is responsible for the substation organization with 60 separate geographic locations.

T&D World: We've seen a lot of turmoil in the utility industry. All the while, Con Ed's stock prices have been rock steady. Why?

Quinn: We've stuck to businesses we know instead of expanding into international operations, and the financial community has rewarded us. We're a 177-year-old company, and you don't get to 177 years if you're shooting from the hip every day. So I think our conservative nature serves us pretty well

T&D World: You have a very reliable system. Are regulators rewarding you for your efforts?

Quinn: Our rate settlements going back years have always had reliability numbers tied to them. Our rate structure has incentives for good performance as well as penalties for poor performance. In fact, our second contingency design came from agreements we reached with regulators years ago. Our strategy is for people not to lose power. Other areas of the country don't have this quality of service. Instead they say, “When you lose power, you'll get it back quickly.” Our goal is to keep the power on. Of course, when we do have outages, our goal is to get it back real fast.

T&D World: Of course, we've seen New York without power.

Quinn: We have experienced outages as everyone does. At Con Ed, we are committed to getting to the root cause, of finding out how and why events happen so we can take steps in the future to prevent incidents. We maintain a significant stock of spare transformers, equipment and cable, which enables us to bring back power quickly in emergency situations. We even painted some of our trucks red. We call them the “red wagons,” because they go and bring that power back. We have an integrated command structure, much like the forest service and the federal government, to respond to emergencies. We have our people ready to don protective gear to enter facilities in the event of nuclear, chemical or biological-type attacks. We treat emergency response as a corporate responsibility.

T&D World: You track your reliability measures closely. Can you envision regulators turning reliability data against you?

Quinn: I believe that reliability speaks for itself. Regulators read Transmission & Distribution World, so they know what's going on. We believe we have an obligation to use the best available technology to serve our customers. The regulators expect that of us. Indeed, if we decided not to use the latest tools for asset management, regulators would come back and say, “This tool was available. Because you didn't avail yourself of it, you made an imprudent decision.” We really need to know what the heck is going on. We are expected to use the latest available tools to run the business in the most productive manner.

T&D World: What do you tell regulators when an incident occurs?

Quinn: We tell the truth. They come in and ask, “What's going on? What are you doing? How are you doing it?” They don't come in and ask for a 90,000-ft perspective. No, they go to the scene and talk to the supervisor. When someone asks, “What happened? Was there a fire?” The supervisor tells the truth. When asked, “Was the maintenance done right?”, the supervisor says what he thinks, yes or no. You just tell them what happened.

T&D World: What do you learn from an event or outage?

Quinn: We always want to know why. We are committed to closing the knowledge loop. It is not enough to replace a failed cable. We investigate to find out why that cable, piece of equipment or splice failed.

T&D World: Con Ed is known as a technology-driven company.

Quinn: Our CEO, Eugene McGrath, is a technical guy. He's an engineer from Manhattan College. The company really is a technical company. We look for technical answers to technical questions.

T&D World: What technologies are you investigating?

Quinn: We are always looking for better solutions. We need better cables, splices, breakers, dielectric substances. We also believe in using technology to improve our processes, safety and reliability, so we look at R&D as a leveraging situation. We've just opened the Con Edison Cable and Splice Center in the Bronx with EPRI involvement. We've had three utilities join with us to fund research and testing.

T&D World: Does Con Ed have a sophisticated asset management strategy?

Quinn: I don't think we are anywhere near declaring victory, nor would I sit here and argue that I have a great asset management program in place. But coming from the nuclear world where we track work orders and backlogs and prioritize them and look at whether or not they affect safety systems, we're always in search of ways of trying to differentiate and keep our heads above water, so to speak, in a tough regulatory environment. We are working at getting an effective asset management process in place in substations and elsewhere.

T&D World: What is asset management?

Quinn: Some people might say, “Asset management is how I manage my breakers, cables and transformers.” I believe it is how to manage my people and my money.” These are the assets I'm trying to manage. We must effectively allocate our people and our money so that we can deliver appropriate levels of reliability. I think you benefit from looking at asset management from a very broad perspective. Asset management tools should be able to help utilities decide where to invest their money in facilities. Are you better off putting your money in distribution cables or into substation breakers? Are you better off putting better network protectors out there? Or better breakers? Are you better off installing automating devices into substations to reduce your manpower there? You could argue that asset management, taken to the ultimate with access to field operating and diagnostic data, could help us make much broader and better business decisions.

T&D World: What does asset management look like from the ground floor?

Quinn: In substations, I want to know where the person is who's thinking, “This breaker overhaul is taking too long. It's costing too much. Why do I have more failures after we've refurbished equipment? Are we using the right tools? How is equipment performing?” Instead of each business area fixing its own problems without communicating with other areas, we want a unified approach. That's what my asset manager, Mike Alfieri, does for us in a lot of ways. He is my maintenance manager. He spearheaded our hosting of the EPRI Power Delivery Asset Management conference here in the city this past July. We brought together utilities from all over the United States and Canada to see if we could develop common ground in addressing asset allocation using evolving asset management tools.

T&D World: Mike just retired?

Quinn: Yes, he was a great resource. So now I've got to find a new person. Of course, new people bring different talents into the organization. I think organizations are a function of people, and you can draw an organization chart, but that organization chart will be different, depending on how the people interact and what skills people bring. But I would like someone who can look at the maintenance and the operational occurrences across the board, and decide where we should put our people and our money to get the most effective result. That's what I'd like to get the new person to do. Because it's such a new position, it's not like I have five of them sitting in the wings waiting to come on board.

T&D World: What traits are you looking for?

Quinn: I value individuals who are willing to be creative. You can call someone and say, “Can you figure out a way to do this?” And they'll call you back and say, “Oh yeah, I made a couple of calls and talked to some vendors and to some utilities. EPRI's done this and that.” In short order, these creative people will put the pieces together and say, “This is an idea I have.” To me, those people are priceless. It's hard to teach people to be creative. Some people are naturally inquisitive and put two and two together. You ask them, “What computer do you have?” It's the latest model. “What are you doing with your computer?” They've got an intranet in their house, and you know he's sitting at the pool, wirelessly working on it. He's got his garage door opener so that when he hits his computer keys, the garage door opens, just to prove that he can do it.

T&D World: What work management software are you using?

Quinn: We put in the Maximo work management system. It's a big system to get up, and we're still having growing pains. You have to train people. How do you process a work order? How do you prioritize it? How do you make sure it doesn't go sit in somebody's in-basket and never get done? We also pay our people out of Maximo, which is one way we're sure hours are getting input, because they don't get paid if they don't use it. So that's a big plus, but we still have a lot of developmental work to make it easier to use. Our supervisors will tell you they have problems. They think there's been too much spent time on paperwork and not enough time interacting with the people in the field.

T&D World: Are you considering any other applications?

Quinn: Now that we have linked EPRI's Maintenance Management Workstation (MMW) with our work management system, all of a sudden we can take data and turn it into better information. And then if we can somehow link this with other EPRI tools, like existing and new, hopefully wireless and smart sensors, we can make better maintenance decisions. Creative people need information if they are to make better decisions. We believe that investment in R&D pays off financially in the long run. Some of our remote monitoring systems on our cable circuits give us an early warning of potential system problems, which then enable us to respond more quickly, keep the lights on, keep our incentives and avoid penalties. EPRI is also developing an asset management tool kit that should help us make better business decisions.

T&D World: What else are you investigating?

Quinn: We are interested in getting all we can from new intelligent electrical devices. We'd like to know if our breakers and transformers are capable of carrying a lot more load and a lot higher duty. We believe better ways of limiting fault currents are a critical enabling technology for new transmission, generation and energy storage projects. Compact, low-cost switching and regulating devices are needed to match capability between substations, feeders and networks.

T&D World: Can you address the changing role of maintenance and diagnostics?

Quinn: When I first started designing nuclear power plants, I'd go and buy a diesel engine from a manufacturer. The manufacturer would say, “For the warranty to be good, you have to do this weekly, monthly, daily or every 200 hours.” Well, why? Clearly, they wanted to sell you spare parts. They wanted to make sure they never had to pay on a warranty, so they were very conservative in their recommendations on maintenance. So what was the maintenance manager's job? Did he run a business? Not really. Every day came down to following this list of things to do, and his goal was to do all of these things better, faster, quicker. With asset management, we look at why we're doing these things. Then we do what's smart and needed, as opposed to what was just on some card or decided by some manufacturer 40 years ago.

T&D World: What initiatives are underway in your department?

Quinn: We developed a system called Datawatch to monitor transmission and distribution transformers from 345 to 13.7 kV. Today, almost all of these transformers have Datawatch modules. We put modules on our new transformers as they come in. The modules tell you the number of operations of your tap changers. The modules also provide some equipment operating temperatures. We're also looking at the EPRI gas and oil on-line analysis monitors. We'll see whether that bears fruit.

T&D World: Do you perform cable monitoring?

Quinn: We do have thermal monitors on certain cable feeds, and we are using thermodynamic rating of certain feeders on the transmission side. We are capable now of measuring some earth temperatures on the distribution side too. We are trying to correlate lab results to what we see in the field.

T&D World: What is out on the horizon?

Quinn: We're looking at how best to design the substations of tomorrow. With our present substation design, we'll build a five-bank substation so that the load can be carried with only three transformers. You could argue that the best capacity factor you could obtain is 60%. You don't make money at 60%. You don't rent an apartment building at 60% occupancy and assume you're going to make any money on it, right? You look at peak load and design for it. But how often are we at peak load? One percent of the time? So we want to look at designs that would give us more capacity factor, better reliability and less cost. A big goal.

As vice president of substation operations for Con Edison, Steve Quinn is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the substations on the electric transmission and distribution system serving New York City and Westchester County. A former officer in the Nuclear Navy and a graduate of Marquette University with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering, Quinn joined Con Edison in 1984 as general manager of technical support for the company's Indian Point 2 Nuclear Generating Station. Quinn has held a variety of positions, including vice president for nuclear operations in 1994, and then vice president of maintenance and construction. Earlier, Quinn held engineering positions at Public Service Company of Indiana, and at Sargent and Lundy in Chicago, Illinois. Quinn is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the American Nuclear Society.

Editor's Note. This interview was held prior to the blackout in the Northeast that also took out New York. Thousands of Con Edison employees worked around the clock to restore power to 3.1 million customers in all areas of New York City and Westchester County. The power went out at 4:11 p.m., Thursday, Aug. 14, 2003, and was fully restored by 9:03 p.m. the following day.

About Consolidated Edison Inc.

In 1823, Con Edison's earliest corporate entity, the New York Gas Light Company, was founded by a consortium of New York City investors. In 1884, six gas companies combined into the Consolidated Gas Company.

The New York Steam Company began providing service in Lower Manhattan in 1882. Today, Con Edison operates the largest steam system in the world, providing steam service to nearly 2000 customers, and serving more than 100,000 commercial and residential establishments in Manhattan from the Battery to 96th Street.

Con Edison's electric business also dates back to 1882, when Thomas Edison's Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York began supplying electricity to 59 customers in a 1-sq-mile (2.5-sq-km) area in Lower Manhattan. By 1900, there were more than 30 companies generating and distributing electricity in New York City and Westchester County, New York. But by 1920, there were far fewer, and the New York Edison Company (then part of Consolidated Gas) was clearly the leader.

In 1936, with electric sales far outstripping gas sales, the name of the company was changed to Consolidated Edison Company of New York Inc. The years that followed brought further amalgamations as Consolidated Edison acquired or merged with more than a dozen companies between 1936 and 1960. Con Edison today is the result of acquisitions, dissolutions and mergers of more than 170 individual electric, gas and steam companies.

On Jan. 1, 1998, following the deregulation of the utility industry in New York state, a holding company, Consolidated Edison Inc., was formed. It is one of the nation's largest investor-owned energy companies, with US$9 billion in annual revenues and approximately $19 billion in assets. The company provides a wide range of energy-related products and services to its customers through two regulated utility subsidiaries and four competitive energy and telecommunications businesses. Con Edison, under several different corporate names, remains the longest continuously traded stock on the New York Stock Exchange. Its largest subsidiary, Consolidated Edison Company of New York Inc., provides electric, gas and steam service to more than 3 million customers in New York City and Westchester County, an area of 660 sq miles (1709 sq km) with a population of nearly 9 million.

Steve Quinn on PDAs

You hear, “We want to get hand-held PDAs (personal digital assistants) to our operators and our mechanics.” Your first thought is, “We're going to give these things to mechanics? You know they can play games on those things. They can do a lot of nefarious things with them.” Whenever I hear that, I think about how it must have been when we invented the first pencil. You couldn't give a pencil to everybody. What would they write? The lawyers might see this. You're going to keep records of this stuff? You'd never give pencils to anybody and now everybody has pencils.

Going back to my nuclear power plant days, there were days when we took logs every couple of hours. I would bet we took 400 to 800 data points every couple hours. We would go down to read boiler temperatures. If the temperature limit was 136, when the actual temperature reached 136, we had to write it down in red and circle it. Then we had a clerk who went through our data sheets and checked to see if we forgot to circle any high temperatures. Then she looked for the supervisor's signature.

With PDAs, you can put a bar code on every piece of equipment, and you can put a scanner on the PDA. Now when a worker goes out and marries the bar code on the equipment to the scanner, you know when he was there. Productivity. He then comes back to a docking station, downloads the data into software that locates elevated temperatures. If yes, it sends an e-mail. It can even write a work order in Maximo. You can trend for 10 days. Now you don't have to have the supervisor review the darn thing. You don't have to have the engineer review the thing. The computer can do a lot of repetitive screening and trending for you. Productivity.