WHY DO WE INSIST ON MAKING EACH SUBSTATION UNIQUE? Over the past year or so, I have asked that question at several standardization presentations I have made around the United States. These conferences also have given me the opportunity to talk one on one with many utility executives and engineers about the concept of standardizing substation designs. The most common response I hear is, “Gene, you just don't understand; it will not work at my utility,” followed by a litany of reasons for doing designs just like the days of old.

Standardization is a relatively old idea to the manufacturing world but not to the utility industry. If we made cars the way we make substations, there would not be much of a rush-hour traffic jam. No one could afford them, and it would take a lot of time to produce them.

I remember not too many years ago when designing a substation was a pretty straightforward process. Lately, however, that has changed. Almost before you start, the final station design is required. It is needed for budgets, site selection, permitting, environment approvals and public input. Nothing can take place without the final design of the station, but where is the time to do that?

There is no easy solution, but there is something that can help and give you a head start: the standardization of design. Is it a concept whose time has arrived?

AN OXYMORON

Why would standards departments be afraid of standardized designs? When I bring up the topic of standardization, I hear a common refrain, “Not in my backyard; our substations are very special facilities.”

Or I hear, “What do you mean? We have standards,” followed by a defensive discussion of what I didn't understand about their particular requirements. Of course, every engineering department has standards. We live by standards. You will even find my name on a few IEEE ANSI standards. But, I am not talking about those types of standards. When I talk about standardized design, I am referring to a repeatable design for a substation that reduces the time to design and the cost of that design.

I am not just talking theory either. This practice has been in place at my company, Public Service Company of New Mexico, for years. Through standardization, we have reduced the time to design a distribution substation from many months to a few hours. We also have reduced the cost of the substation by 20% to 25%. Savings come about by taking advantage of the fact that you can use generic designs to meet 90% to 95% of the general design needs of your system.

I have visited several utilities as a result of my presentations and discussions so they could show me why standardization would not work for them. First off, I asked them to pull out several substation plan views and one-line diagrams from their drawing files. Most were surprised to see there was a commonality to their designs (the one-line diagrams were the giveaway). With a little work, most found that the hundreds of stations on their systems could be reduced to two or three repeatable designs.

You are probably thinking if it is so simple, why hasn't it caught on in the industry? That is a good question. It also is a complex question. Thirty some odd years ago I had a mentor charged with turning me into a substation engineer. He was proud that he had never built two identical substations. He was a true craftsman much in the tradition of a fine watchmaker. Each part of the station was unique and designed to fit like a piece of a puzzle. That tradition is still strongly embedded in our collective psyche. Unfortunately, today's fast-changing, do-more-with-less society doesn't lend itself to that mind-set.

I think there is also the unconscious anxiety that standardized design equates to fewer engineers in the engineering department. Today's dwindling engineering workforce does not support this condition either. Our industry is poised to lose more than half its engineers and technical workforce in the next 10 years as a result of retirements.

I have visited universities in Texas and New Mexico for a couple of years now to talk to graduating power-engineering students about careers in utilities. There aren't a lot of power-engineering students out there folks! Of those students, multiple job offers is commonplace upon graduation.So, I can only conclude standardization is not really a threat to job security either. We need to support standardization to meet the needs of the utilities to supply facilities, keep reliability high and reduce the costs of those facilities. I hate to use an old cliché, but it fits: We need to work smarter, not harder.

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Gene Wolf is the principal engineer for stations with Public Service Company of New Mexico). He is responsible for the design and construction of all extra-high-voltage station facilities on the PNM system. GWOLF@pnm.com