When a circuit goes down, traditional best practices call for four remote attempts to check the equipment, before a crew is dispatched. Our Smart Grid offers a better way.
When a circuit goes down, traditional best practices call for four remote attempts to check the equipment, before a crew is dispatched. Our Smart Grid offers a better way.
“Reclosing” is a process of opening the switch, stopping the flow of electricity, then reclosing it to resume the connection. The purpose of opening and reclosing the circuit is to restore power to customers as quickly as possible, and it often works.
When a problem occurs on the power system, equipment we call a switch opens to stop the flow of electricity. “Reclosing” is the process of automatically closing that device to restore the connection to determine if the line is clear. The purpose of reclosing is to try to restore power to customers without the assistance of field teams.
But it can also produce noise and sparks that cause people in the vicinity of the circuit to worry, and can cause minor damage to the system, that has to be repaired later. In some cases, it can even cause other customers serviced from the same substation to experience dips in voltage, as the attempts are carried out.
The incredible network intelligence of our Smart Grid means that this is not necessary. With our power system comprised of nearly 1,500 switches that can sense problems and route around them, reclosing is no longer the only way to restore power without the use of field personnel. This allows us to use Reclosing less and avoid all of its negative side effects. Instead, we allow our Smart Grid to perform switching based on data that minimizes impacts to customers and equipment.
We still attempt reclosing, but only when it is most likely to be successful, using real time processing to determine when to open and close the switches.
Now, when power flickers during a thunderstorm, it might be because a smart recloser is testing the fault, and then – if necessary – routing around it, through other circuits, other switches.
Our top priority is preventing downtime for the homes and businesses surrounding a fault. Distribution automation performs the switching in about one second, rather than cycling through tests and a manual power lockout.
This rethink of reclosing, however, also brings other advantages. The voltage in other homes does not dip during repeated reclosing attempts, and our substations, transformers, and other equipment are spared strain on the system.