Following Hurricane Isaac life is getting back to normal for most residents all along the Gulf Coast. As with other major storm recovery efforts of years past, power utilities are looking out for each other through mutual assistance practices.
Isaac, which came aground in the U.S. as a Category 2 hurricane, arrived in time for the 7-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the worst hurricane in American history in terms of dollars spent on damage recovery.
Some of these crew members worked 16-hour days to help families without power. To do that, they had to take open-ended commitments of their time and leave their hometowns for days or weeks at a time.
Eric Silagy, president of Florida Power & Light company told NBC's Today Show that these storm recovery crews are like an army on the move. Looking at some of the video, it's easy to see the truth in that comparison.
WLOX.com - The News for South Mississippi
Cleco Corp. managed a 2,400-member storm team to restore power to 95,000 customers. The utility secured workers from Oklahoma, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, Virginia and Maryland.
Alabama Power sent crews into Mississippi to help with recover efforts there. See video of that deployment here.
AEP's Southwestern Electric Power Co. served in Shreveport, Louisiana, booking hotel rooms for crews to sleep in, organized fleet vehicle fuel stops and planned out other logistics. The utility received help from AEP operating companies from Ohio, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky and Virginia, as well as outside contractors.
Dominion Virginia Power sent 130 workers and contractors, plus bucket trucks. Dominion workers were returning a favor in a way, as crews from Louisiana came to Dominion's Virginia service area to assist with the June 2012 derecho.
Oklahoma Gas & Electric sent 71 employees to southern Louisiana. OG&E, a member of the Southeast Electric Exchange, served in the same area following Hurricane Gustav.
TECO Energy and Progress Energy Florida sent teams from Florida to help storm victims — about 290 workers total. Progress Energy's parent company, Duke Energy, sent 1,000 contractors total to help restore power.
These are just a few examples and this blog post is not meant to be comprehensive. Utilities maintain extensive networks of work crews, and some are participants of multiple assistance programs.
Mutual assistance is pretty cool to watch at work. When there's a big job to do, it's hard to imagine storm recovery going as smoothly any other way. It's especially cool when you hear about a utility returning the favor by assisting crews that once helped them.
Showing posts with label distribution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label distribution. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Fixing the world's biggest blackout
About 10 percent of the world's population lost power recently as a blackout swept across northern India. As many as 700 million people, or twice the population of the U.S., were affected. Fortunately there have been no reports of deaths connected to the blackout, but the loss of power did result in traffic snarls, stranded train passengers and a group of trapped coal miners.
So what can the world's biggest democracy do to help stave off such wide-sweeping outages in the future? To find out, I spoke with Jason Black, a research leader in grid systems with Battelle's Energy, Environment and Material Sciences Global Business.
Black characterized India's power grid as reasonably good on the transmission side, but a bit dodgy on the distribution side. Furthermore, the country has struggled with power shortages as its current generation mix often can't meet the demands of the population.
"In many sections of the country, they use rolling blackouts regularly," Black said. "But I don't think it's as simple as an excessive load. There are protection schemes in place to deal with that."
In recent years, India has worked to encourage investment in new power generation of just about every type, including distributed renewable generation like solar energy, of which India now has about 1 GW.
"Traditionally they have used coal, and they have some hydro as well. They have made some legislation that was meant to increase their renewable capacity — just as a way to try to correct some of their power shortages," he said.
In addition to bringing more generation online, India's grid operators have attempted to interconnect their grid more thoroughly — an approach not without its dangers.
"[Interconnection is] good from one perspective, because the redundancies can address an interruption in one area. But from another perspective, it can increase the risk of cascading power outages, which it appears this one is."
Though its transmission grid is reasonably well developed, India's rapid development and population growth have left it with a distribution system that often falls short of the task of delivering power to those that need it.
"They have had some ongoing problems with electricity theft, which has become a local political problem and leads to losses, making the pull on the system unpredictable. Cleaning up the distribution system would help them a lot," he said.
For one thing, India's grid could implement underfrequency load shedding as is done in the U.S.
"In the U.S., we operate our system at 60 Hertz. This keeps the power flowing in sync, so generators don't trip offline. Imbalances in demand and supply are what cause these kinds of outages — when the generators can't handle the imbalances. That's one way to get these cascading power outages," he said.
To prevent further outages during the restoration process, India's grid operators need to be careful how they manage the grid in the coming days.
"If you're a steam plant and the system has tripped off to protect itself, your steam cools off. It can take many hours to return to service. Depending on how many of their generators have black start capability, that process can take a while," he said.
As generators start spinning again, grid operators have important choices to make.
"There's a trade off. Do I bring on all my generators, or do I bring on a certain subset of customers that I can get to faster?" he said. "If there isn't enough slack in the system when you start up these plants, it can bring the system offline again."
Furthermore, there might be physical damage to the grid that needs fixing — delaying restoration even more.
"There could be parts of the grid that broke... Some transformers that exploded or some circuit breakers that opened. They have to deal with those things before bringing the grid back online," he said.
Black said this blackout is likely one of the worst in history, in terms of the number of people affected. While Indian officials are still investigating the causes, it bears all the telltale signs of a cascading power outage, like the Northeast blackout of 2003, which began in Ohio, ran through New York and into Canada. But even in a blackout so widespread in North America, only 55 million people were affected. It's almost unthinkable to most of us to imagine 700 million people without power.
But that's pretty much how it always goes with power outages, as people in the utility industry know. People don't think about it at all until the lights go out. Then the next day (hopefully) when they come back on, the finger-wagging starts.
So what can the world's biggest democracy do to help stave off such wide-sweeping outages in the future? To find out, I spoke with Jason Black, a research leader in grid systems with Battelle's Energy, Environment and Material Sciences Global Business.
Black characterized India's power grid as reasonably good on the transmission side, but a bit dodgy on the distribution side. Furthermore, the country has struggled with power shortages as its current generation mix often can't meet the demands of the population.
"In many sections of the country, they use rolling blackouts regularly," Black said. "But I don't think it's as simple as an excessive load. There are protection schemes in place to deal with that."
In recent years, India has worked to encourage investment in new power generation of just about every type, including distributed renewable generation like solar energy, of which India now has about 1 GW.
"Traditionally they have used coal, and they have some hydro as well. They have made some legislation that was meant to increase their renewable capacity — just as a way to try to correct some of their power shortages," he said.
In addition to bringing more generation online, India's grid operators have attempted to interconnect their grid more thoroughly — an approach not without its dangers.
"[Interconnection is] good from one perspective, because the redundancies can address an interruption in one area. But from another perspective, it can increase the risk of cascading power outages, which it appears this one is."
Though its transmission grid is reasonably well developed, India's rapid development and population growth have left it with a distribution system that often falls short of the task of delivering power to those that need it.
"They have had some ongoing problems with electricity theft, which has become a local political problem and leads to losses, making the pull on the system unpredictable. Cleaning up the distribution system would help them a lot," he said.
For one thing, India's grid could implement underfrequency load shedding as is done in the U.S.
"In the U.S., we operate our system at 60 Hertz. This keeps the power flowing in sync, so generators don't trip offline. Imbalances in demand and supply are what cause these kinds of outages — when the generators can't handle the imbalances. That's one way to get these cascading power outages," he said.
To prevent further outages during the restoration process, India's grid operators need to be careful how they manage the grid in the coming days.
"If you're a steam plant and the system has tripped off to protect itself, your steam cools off. It can take many hours to return to service. Depending on how many of their generators have black start capability, that process can take a while," he said.
As generators start spinning again, grid operators have important choices to make.
"There's a trade off. Do I bring on all my generators, or do I bring on a certain subset of customers that I can get to faster?" he said. "If there isn't enough slack in the system when you start up these plants, it can bring the system offline again."
Furthermore, there might be physical damage to the grid that needs fixing — delaying restoration even more.
"There could be parts of the grid that broke... Some transformers that exploded or some circuit breakers that opened. They have to deal with those things before bringing the grid back online," he said.
Black said this blackout is likely one of the worst in history, in terms of the number of people affected. While Indian officials are still investigating the causes, it bears all the telltale signs of a cascading power outage, like the Northeast blackout of 2003, which began in Ohio, ran through New York and into Canada. But even in a blackout so widespread in North America, only 55 million people were affected. It's almost unthinkable to most of us to imagine 700 million people without power.
But that's pretty much how it always goes with power outages, as people in the utility industry know. People don't think about it at all until the lights go out. Then the next day (hopefully) when they come back on, the finger-wagging starts.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Unmanned drones could deploy in the fight against outages
By Jeff Postelwait
Online Editor
Maybe this is just the viewpoint of an American who grew up on "Terminator" movies, but I still find it incredibly weird and interesting that we live in a world where robots patrol the skies. Apparently the Electric Power Research Institute still thinks robots are cool too because they're researching ways for the technology to help out the electric power industry.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or drones, of the same category of the Hellfire-carrying Predator, deployed around the world by the United States Armed Forces, could potentially be used by utilities to check on the status of distribution systems, according to an EPRI study. Instead of sporting Hellfire missiles, though, these units could carry cameras, sensors and global positioning capability.
It's easy to see why an all-seeing eye that can fly to a remote area and report data back to its operators might be of good use to an industry that frequently deals with icy roads, downed trees and other hazards at the very same time when the need for good communications has never been higher.
EPRI decided to take that idea and run with it with a series of tests of different types of UAVs at the New Mexico State University Flight Test Center, which is just a short distance away from the White Sands Missile Range in south-central New Mexico. These aircraft carried high-resolution video cameras and transmitted images of power lines from a useful distance of 7,000 feet in the air.
Footage shot like this could provide timely information to grid operators and their field crews, allowing them to better prioritize their outage restoration efforts and get accurate information sent off to affected customers.
"The tests indicated that unmanned airborne technologies equipped with sensors, cameras and GPS could be deployed quickly, allowing utilities to evaluate large areas more quickly than ground-based crews, then develop a repair strategy and mobilize repair crews more quickly and effectively," according to EPRI.
EPRI is also taking a look at the capabilities of drones for the inspection and assessment of overhead transmission lines. To make sure these findings are more practical for the utilities, EPRI is gathering data on UAV functional requirements, costs, inspection technologies, as well as testing several different types of UAVs.
Other sectors have taken a look at UAVs before, including the oil and gas industry, firefighting departments, meteorologists, forestry services and others. Still, I think that for utilities that have the resources to put these drones in the sky, it could dramatically boost response time — and utilities know that when customers are in the dark, every second counts.
Online Editor
Maybe this is just the viewpoint of an American who grew up on "Terminator" movies, but I still find it incredibly weird and interesting that we live in a world where robots patrol the skies. Apparently the Electric Power Research Institute still thinks robots are cool too because they're researching ways for the technology to help out the electric power industry.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or drones, of the same category of the Hellfire-carrying Predator, deployed around the world by the United States Armed Forces, could potentially be used by utilities to check on the status of distribution systems, according to an EPRI study. Instead of sporting Hellfire missiles, though, these units could carry cameras, sensors and global positioning capability.
It's easy to see why an all-seeing eye that can fly to a remote area and report data back to its operators might be of good use to an industry that frequently deals with icy roads, downed trees and other hazards at the very same time when the need for good communications has never been higher.
EPRI decided to take that idea and run with it with a series of tests of different types of UAVs at the New Mexico State University Flight Test Center, which is just a short distance away from the White Sands Missile Range in south-central New Mexico. These aircraft carried high-resolution video cameras and transmitted images of power lines from a useful distance of 7,000 feet in the air.
Footage shot like this could provide timely information to grid operators and their field crews, allowing them to better prioritize their outage restoration efforts and get accurate information sent off to affected customers.
"The tests indicated that unmanned airborne technologies equipped with sensors, cameras and GPS could be deployed quickly, allowing utilities to evaluate large areas more quickly than ground-based crews, then develop a repair strategy and mobilize repair crews more quickly and effectively," according to EPRI.
EPRI is also taking a look at the capabilities of drones for the inspection and assessment of overhead transmission lines. To make sure these findings are more practical for the utilities, EPRI is gathering data on UAV functional requirements, costs, inspection technologies, as well as testing several different types of UAVs.
Other sectors have taken a look at UAVs before, including the oil and gas industry, firefighting departments, meteorologists, forestry services and others. Still, I think that for utilities that have the resources to put these drones in the sky, it could dramatically boost response time — and utilities know that when customers are in the dark, every second counts.
Monday, March 26, 2012
A utility pole tree?
By Jeff Postelwait
Online Editor
On Spring Break weekend, my family, friends and I went on a 7-mile hike in the Winding Stair Mountain National Recreation Area in Electric Light & Power's home state of Oklahoma. The area, which is home to the Ouachita National Forest, extends into Arkansas. It's the oldest national forest in the southern states and was a setting used in the John Wayne classic "True Grit," as well as the 2010 Coen Brothers remake.
The striking thing about the land for me, being an Oklahoman, was the very tall, very vertical cedar trees. From my first step out of my car, I could hear the wind rushing through the treetops (and not much else). With as many ice storms, violent winds and tornadoes that come through the area, there aren't many tall trees in this part of the world — although we do have some battle-tested utilities and co-ops that can vouch for the intensity of this kind of severe weather.
About a third of the way into the hike, I rounded a corner on the trail that cut near a small creek and saw something worth taking a few pictures of. I'm not the world's most experienced hiker, and I don't know a lot about forests or trees, but I'd never seen a tree quite like this one before.
To me, this tree's trunk looked for all the world like a utility pole. I thought that someone's "Lost Dog" poster might not look too out of place duct-taped to this tree.
The area where the thick, papery bark had fallen away revealed a smooth, shiny surface that was immediately familiar. Yet when I looked skyward, what I saw looked more like the other cedar trees that made up this forest.
After the hike, I had to do a little bit of Googling just to satisfy my curiosity. Even though I work for a company that deals with the transmission and distribution side of the utility industry, I wasn't exactly certain where all those familiar-looking power poles actually came from. A few sources online have said that cedar wood is used by utility pole manufacturers because the wood is more resilient to moisture, weather, warping and temperature changes — clearly qualities that you'd want if you were making utility poles.
So, again, I'm not an expert, but I wanted to share a little scene from my hike that I thought was interesting. Also, there might be someone out there who could comment a little more on where utilities get their poles and what kind of trees are used to make them.
Happy trails!
Online Editor
On Spring Break weekend, my family, friends and I went on a 7-mile hike in the Winding Stair Mountain National Recreation Area in Electric Light & Power's home state of Oklahoma. The area, which is home to the Ouachita National Forest, extends into Arkansas. It's the oldest national forest in the southern states and was a setting used in the John Wayne classic "True Grit," as well as the 2010 Coen Brothers remake.
The striking thing about the land for me, being an Oklahoman, was the very tall, very vertical cedar trees. From my first step out of my car, I could hear the wind rushing through the treetops (and not much else). With as many ice storms, violent winds and tornadoes that come through the area, there aren't many tall trees in this part of the world — although we do have some battle-tested utilities and co-ops that can vouch for the intensity of this kind of severe weather.
About a third of the way into the hike, I rounded a corner on the trail that cut near a small creek and saw something worth taking a few pictures of. I'm not the world's most experienced hiker, and I don't know a lot about forests or trees, but I'd never seen a tree quite like this one before.
To me, this tree's trunk looked for all the world like a utility pole. I thought that someone's "Lost Dog" poster might not look too out of place duct-taped to this tree.
The area where the thick, papery bark had fallen away revealed a smooth, shiny surface that was immediately familiar. Yet when I looked skyward, what I saw looked more like the other cedar trees that made up this forest.
After the hike, I had to do a little bit of Googling just to satisfy my curiosity. Even though I work for a company that deals with the transmission and distribution side of the utility industry, I wasn't exactly certain where all those familiar-looking power poles actually came from. A few sources online have said that cedar wood is used by utility pole manufacturers because the wood is more resilient to moisture, weather, warping and temperature changes — clearly qualities that you'd want if you were making utility poles.
So, again, I'm not an expert, but I wanted to share a little scene from my hike that I thought was interesting. Also, there might be someone out there who could comment a little more on where utilities get their poles and what kind of trees are used to make them.
Happy trails!
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Lineman's Rodeo hits KC
I made a joke to my coworkers that, this weekend, I'm traveling in the beaten track of Wilbert Harrison---going to Kansas City, here I come. Sadly, even with my slightly off-key singing, few people get that joke anymore.
This weekend, Kansas City is host to the International Lineman's Rodeo. Well, more specifically, the rodeo plops down in Overland Park, a suburb of KC.
This is the 27th annual lineman's rodeo, and the 2010 version is packed with an exhibit floor and the rodeo events themselves, which happen on Saturday in Bonner Springs, Kansas, another suburb of KC. Everything's in the 'burbs these days.
Kansas City Power and Light along with Westar Energy are the host utilities for this well-attended event attracting the best of the best in lineman from across the country and around the world. The rodeo on Saturday pits utility teams against one another in a number of traditional lineman tasks from pole climbing to hurt man rescue. There are also a number of surprise "mystery events," where the teams don't know what they will be tested on until they get on site. (Last year, one of the mystery events was replacing a lightening arrestor. Southern California Edison won that event.)
The first Lineman's Rodeo was held in September 1984 with twelve participating teams from Kansas and Missouri. This year, there are teams from Canada, Hawaii and even Brazil, according to the show's registration people (whom I chatted with a bit earlier today). While the exposition that comes into play today and tomorrow before the rodeo is quite a draw (especially for free t-shirts), it's clear that the real excitement is yet to come---at the Saturday rodeo. When even your registration staff is excited, you know you have something special in hand.
The expo at the Overland Park Convention Center over the next two days features a number of exhibitors from Aircraft Dynamics to Buckingham Manufacturing Co., from Duratel to our own sister publication Utility Products. (Utility Products is currently neck-and-neck in the running for the best giveaway t-shirt, right up there with Bulwark, which has a line that extends out from its booth and down the aisle. T-shirts really are the thing here at the Lineman's Rodeo.)
Those handy folks at registration told me that, on average, the exhibit floor will take in around 2500 people today and tomorrow before the Saturday rodeo. Additionally, for this year, there are over 150 teams registered for the rodeo itself and around 200 apprentices. (It's a bit down from years past due to the economy, but the Lineman's Rodeo is still a very strong event indeed. That expo floor was packed when I left a few minutes ago, and Utility Products was darn close to running out of t-shirts, as were most exhibitors.)
Are you here at the Lineman's Rodeo? If so, leave me a comment or two about what you're seeing and hearing at the event. Reading this after the event? Tell me your favorite winners and moments at the rodeo.
Monday, August 3, 2009
CO-OPs Do One Thing
It appears that one area of our industry may be recession-proof indeed: co-ops.
This week, the National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corp. announced results from its annual key ratio trend analysis (KRTA) report that keeps an eye on the wallets of distribution cooperatives across the country. Low and behold, this year’s results show cooperatives that are strong and holding steady, even amidst the gloom and doom newscasts lamenting the demise of consumer confidence, the evils of the job market and concerns that the stimulus moola has been a waste.
The KRTA report is based on data submitted by 819 distribution cooperatives for the year ending Dec. 31, 2008. The report had three major findings.
1.) Revenues at co-ops kept up with fuel issues last year, indicating that, indeed, fuel adjustments and rate increases are being used more often, keeping the co-ops healthy.
2.) Financial ratios are not careening out of control, so no worries about a Wall Street crash among the rural power set. TIER is super (2.27, which is happier than the 1.25 required to borrow cash). Modified debt is A-OK. Aggregate cash is weathering nicely. Cash equivalent is solid.
3.) We have growth. Consumer growth rate was 1 percent. OK, 1 percent doesn’t sound super. But, that’s nearly double that of municipals and IOUs, according to the EIA. Kilowatt hours were up, too (1.22 percent).
Perhaps this only goes to prove that power is a necessity, and if you’re in the business of selling power and not selling a smart grid or a marketing campaign or investments or stock portfolios, you can survive those downturns. I’d say it’s all about ‘back to basics,’ but co-ops are all about basics and always were. They’ve never strayed from that.
Reminds me of the old farmer down the street from my parents’ place in Kansas. The man never strayed, either. Every year, he grew wheat. He’d say, “Kansas was meant to grow wheat. Period.” His peers experimented with soy beans, with corn for ethanol, with cotton, even. Trying to stay ahead of the market and the prices. But, that old farmer, he lived and breathed wheat. He knew wheat. He stuck with wheat. And, while he may have had a lean year or two, he never busted. But some of his peers did.
He had wheat; the co-ops have power. The simplicity and experience with both may be the key: Do one thing. Do it well. It’s a UNIX concept. It’s Google’s corporate philosophy. And, for co-ops, it may have been a saving grace during an economic crisis.
This week, the National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corp. announced results from its annual key ratio trend analysis (KRTA) report that keeps an eye on the wallets of distribution cooperatives across the country. Low and behold, this year’s results show cooperatives that are strong and holding steady, even amidst the gloom and doom newscasts lamenting the demise of consumer confidence, the evils of the job market and concerns that the stimulus moola has been a waste.
The KRTA report is based on data submitted by 819 distribution cooperatives for the year ending Dec. 31, 2008. The report had three major findings.
1.) Revenues at co-ops kept up with fuel issues last year, indicating that, indeed, fuel adjustments and rate increases are being used more often, keeping the co-ops healthy.
2.) Financial ratios are not careening out of control, so no worries about a Wall Street crash among the rural power set. TIER is super (2.27, which is happier than the 1.25 required to borrow cash). Modified debt is A-OK. Aggregate cash is weathering nicely. Cash equivalent is solid.
3.) We have growth. Consumer growth rate was 1 percent. OK, 1 percent doesn’t sound super. But, that’s nearly double that of municipals and IOUs, according to the EIA. Kilowatt hours were up, too (1.22 percent).
Perhaps this only goes to prove that power is a necessity, and if you’re in the business of selling power and not selling a smart grid or a marketing campaign or investments or stock portfolios, you can survive those downturns. I’d say it’s all about ‘back to basics,’ but co-ops are all about basics and always were. They’ve never strayed from that.
Reminds me of the old farmer down the street from my parents’ place in Kansas. The man never strayed, either. Every year, he grew wheat. He’d say, “Kansas was meant to grow wheat. Period.” His peers experimented with soy beans, with corn for ethanol, with cotton, even. Trying to stay ahead of the market and the prices. But, that old farmer, he lived and breathed wheat. He knew wheat. He stuck with wheat. And, while he may have had a lean year or two, he never busted. But some of his peers did.
He had wheat; the co-ops have power. The simplicity and experience with both may be the key: Do one thing. Do it well. It’s a UNIX concept. It’s Google’s corporate philosophy. And, for co-ops, it may have been a saving grace during an economic crisis.
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