Abstract:

As pressure upon utilities increases for improved effectiveness, efficiency, and customer service there has been a significant increase in the demand for power system information from utility substations. At SRP, this demand has come from operational groups throughout the company to support the operational needs for fault analysis, system planning, power quality, engineering, maintenance, metering, asset management and other data.

To address this demand in the past, SRP had implemented various independent stand-alone systems. Each system essentially consisting of many independent Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs), each communicating over its own serial line to its own master station computer.

This presentation details a ground-breaking SRP project to evolve this stand-alone design to a more integrated networked architecture by applying the basic design philosophies and principles developed by the EPRI/IntelliGrid Consortium. The integrated networked architecture would include LAN-connected IEDs capable of performing multiple functions and feeding a common corporate database.

This SRP project, completed in 2006, saw the design, procurement and installation of this integrated network architecture at a major SRP 500kV substation that included two 500kV power transformers and three 500kV circuit breakers. This integrated system now provides near real-time information for improved decision-making to various users corporate-wide about these important substation assets - improving maintenance planning, asset utilization and response time to outages. As a result of the success of the Browning Integration Project, SRP has continued to expand this concept at more 500kV stations.