CUTTING COSTS Through
INNOVATION Economic uncertainty drives public power districts and electric cooperatives to develop technologies to keep affordable, reliable electricity flowing by Magen Howard
f treated well, your public power district or electric cooperative’s equipment and infrastructure—poles, lines, transformers, and the like—can last for decades. But as useful life ends for these components— and with the difficulties of building new power plants in the near future—rural electric utilities are increasingly turning to innovative technologies to keep service reliable, safe, and affordable. “Public power districts and electric cooperatives have been leaders in adopting technologies to improve reliability and keep costs contained,” says Brian Sloboda, senior program manager with the Cooperative Research Network, an arm of the Arlington, Va.-based National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA). A good example involves system automation, a set of devices and software programs that allows utilities to track the flow of electricity in near real time. Public power districts and electric cooperatives are leading the
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way in deploying and testing these devices, due to their potential to boost efficiency. Sloboda offers down-line automation (DLA) as a prime example. Rather than wait for an outage report to be called in, DLA—by monitoring electric lines—can detect a problem (such as a tree branch touching a line) as it occurs and possibly fix it remotely (by rerouting power) before an outage occurs. “The goal of DLA is to decrease the duration of an outage and reduce the number of people who experience it,” Sloboda explains. Another useful technology, called automatic vehicle location, or AVL, allows a dispatcher at utility headquarters to track service trucks and what equipment each truck carries. This comes in handy when a trouble report comes in; the dispatcher can route the nearest truck that has the right parts to the problem site. AVL saves time, fuel, and potential slow downs, because rural electric utilities can avoid sending a truck that may have to travel a blocked road, for example. Public power districts and electric cooperatives are also becoming more sophisticated with GIS (geographic information systems). With electronic mapping programs, utilities can log in every asset across its service territory, and its exact location and age, so items can be serviced or replaced on a schedule rather than after they’ve failed. GIS also helps in emergency situations, Please turn to page 8
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