March 1, 2008
Global Viewpoint
Celebrate Chicago Style
The Best Steak I've Ever had was Served on a Paper Plate in a Staging Area Near a Job Site. The cole slaw and baked potato were equally as good, even...
Features
Mountain High
In Washington State's Chelan County, Glacier-Clad Mountains Make for a Scenic View. Since 1936, a public utility district has been serving the power needs...
Reliability Takes Wing
Animal-Caused Faults on Electrical Systems Have Beleaguered Engineers and Operations Personnel since power facilities were first installed. Today, mammals,...
Georgia Power Makes a Smooth Move to GIS
What is the Best Way to Move from a Legacy Computer-Aided Design System to an enterprise-wide geographic information system (GIS) deployment? When Georgia...
Three Techniques to Mitigate Lightning
Austria's 110-kV Distribution System is a Key Component of the Distribution Network. A substantial proportion of this overhead-line system is located...
Lethal Flashovers Can Be Thwarted
We Have Produced Electricity for Decades, and Every Year We Learn More about the hazards and how to protect ourselves from those hazards. Failure of a...
Libya Reinforces the Mediterranean Ring
Libya is One of the World's Leading Oil-Gas Producing Nations with Significant Financial Reserves. Hence, Libya situated in the centre of North Africa...
Business Developments
California Public Utility Receives Approval to Build Critical Transmission Line
The board of directors of Imperial Irrigation District (IID; El Centro California, U.S.), a community-owned utility, has unanimously approved a critical...
Siemens Completes HVDC Link in China
After successful completion of the test phase, Siemens Energy (Erlangen, Germany) commissioned the Guizhou-Guangdong II high-voltage dc (HVDC) transmission...
EA Technology Implements Global Growth Strategy
EA Technology has opened sales offices in Shanghai, China, and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, as part of its global growth strategy. The U.K.-based...
ELECTRIC UTILITY FLEET MANAGERS CONFERENCE
The Electric Utility Fleet Managers Conference (EUFMC) will hold its 55th annual gathering June 15-18, 2008, at the Williamsburg Lodge in Williamsburg,...
ISOs Tap into Ancillary Services Market with New Technology
LiveData Inc. (Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.), which specializes in real-time data integration and data display technology, has entered into the power...
Alabama Upgrades Transmission Line
Alabama Power Co., which supplies electricity to more than 1.4 million residential and commercial customers, will install 3M's high-capacity aluminum...
BGE Chooses Cooper Power Systems' Cannon Demand Management Solution
Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. (BGE; Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.), a subsidiary of Constellation Energy, will be using the Cannon Demand Management solution...
EnergyConnect's Demand-Response Business Grows
EnergyConnect (Portland, Oregon, U.S.), a wholly owned subsidiary of Microfield Group Inc. and a provider of demand-response technologies, will provide...
Online Calculators Benefit Customers
PECO (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.) is providing environmental and energy-saving information to its customers through a new series of Web-based calculators...
Technology Updates
Dominion Uses G&W Electric's Current-Limiting Fuses to Solve Safety Concerns
Almost every utility with older downtown networks faces the risk of a potentially hazardous failure of network transformers. This was the case at Dominion...
PG&E's SmartMeter Program Integrates Ecologic Analytics' MDMS and Goes Live with a Phased Customer Rollout
Pacific Gas & Electric (PG San Francisco, California, U.S.) has completed the implementation and integration of Ecologic Analytics' (Bloomington, Minnesota,...
Two Utilities Order AMSC's D-VAR Solution
American Superconductor Corp. (AMSC; Devens, Massachusetts, U.S.) has received orders from two electric utilities for its proprietary D-VAR (dynamic VAR)...
FAULT INDICATOR USE
The top 8 reasons to use fault indicators on your distribution system: Distance-to-fault relays tell you the distance from the station to a fault, but...
Quarterly Report
GIS: The New Utility Infrastructure
Many Utilities Rely on Geospatial Technology as the Nucleus of Their Operations. It extends from field and operations staff to other departments, and...
Characters with Character
Front Lines
JIM HICKS IS NOTHING IF NOT PASSIONATE Having failed at his first attempt at retirement, Hicks, president of The Shaw Group's Energy Delivery Systems...
Electric Utility Operations
Rodney Rice
Born in 1966 in Asheville, North Carolina, and has two siblings. Has a girlfriend named Amy and two sons: Luke (18) and Ridge (3). Served 20 years in...
Contractor Invests in Portable Band Saws
The expansion of the nation's electrical grid has increased the demand for the installation of underground high-voltage transmission cable. To cleanly...
Adventurous Linemen Enjoy Helicopter Workor
Linemen for Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG San Francisco, California) suspend from helicopters and work on a 500-kV energized power line. The utility,...
California Utility Has High Hopes for High-Tech Grid
Last October, Southern California Edison (SCE; Rose-mead, California) completed installation of a first-of-kind neighborhood distribution circuit referred...
Products and Services
PRODUCTS & Services
Right-of-Way Mulcher BRON designed its 400XHP Forestry Mulcher to remove brush from seismic lines, electric and pipeline right-of-way maintenance, commercial...
Straight Talk
Refining Reliability Standards
The North American Reliability Corporation's Recent Paper Adequate Level of Reliability Deserves Our Full Attention. Achieving this in the nation's electric...
