Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L; Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.) is moving forward with a wireless monitoring project rollout with Telemetric's (Boise, Idaho, U.S.) TC012 MicroRTU capacitor bank monitor. KCP&L is using the Telemetric MicroRTU to monitor and remotely control capacitor banks in the outlying areas of its service territory. This decreases time-consuming field inspections and provides a way to quickly report power outages and voltage anomalies.

“KCP&L's rollout further verifies the broad range of applications for Telemetric's technology,” said Scott Schoenherr, Telemetric's CEO. “Using the Telemetric MicroRTU enables KCP&L to improve system operating efficiencies, and reduce labor and capital equipment expenditures. Based on KCP&L's success, Telemetric has now installed TC012s at several major utilities throughout the country.”

To cut costs and increase the reliability of its capacitor banks, KCP&L determined the most cost-effective way to monitor these banks was to use Telemetric's wireless solution. After a successful major pilot project in both its metropolitan and remote service territories, KCP&L decided to completely roll out the Telemetric MicroRTU in the remote territories.

The MicroRTU will monitor the neutral current and control power on the capacitor bank. It will also use the control channel of the public cellular system to send an alarm when a capacitor bank changes from one condition to another due to a blown capacitor fuse, circuit outage or voltage problem.

“This monitoring device will reduce the number of field inspections,” said Bill Herdegen, KCP&L's vice president of distribution operations. “Continual monitoring of our capacitor banks will provide improved capacitor and circuit operating performance, voltage regulation and voltage balance. This will reduce operating expenses and improve service quality to our customers.” For its metropolitan service territory, KCP&L will be piloting a new version of the TC012 using enhanced digital communications.

The TC012 MicroRTU was developed in conjunction with KCP&L and other utilities as a specialized application of Telemetric's general-purpose T646 MicroRTU. Demonstrating the flexibility of the T646 MicroRTU, Telemetric worked closely with KCP&L to tailor the T646 to meet the company's specific application requirements that were not previously available at this price point.
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