New Smart Grid Device Monitoring Secondary Substations

May 7, 2012 - PRLog -- Together with a number of customers in Norway, Kamstrup has successfully completed field testing of UtiliKeeper® - a Smart Grid component, which by means of external sensors, detects critical substation situations and sends alarms to operators in close to real time. UtiliKeeper’s® integrated logger functionality provides an overview of historical data and events.

Kamstrup is now ready to deliver UtiliKeeper® in high quantities and is therefore launching UtiliKeeper® for all its markets.

With the increasing low voltage grid challenges due to fluctuating distributed generation and new loads like EVs and heat-pumps together with the increasing burden on utilities from customers demanding quick problem resolution and strict compliance requirements from regulatory organizations, the need for being able to monitor and control thousands of secondary substations, which can be dispersed over hundreds of kilometers of territory, is ever increasing.

The Norwegian utility Istad Nett has made great experiences with UtiliKeeper as a valuable monitoring tool.
According to Purchase Manager, Nils Petter Skjegstad, Istad Nett uses UtiliKeeper primarily to collect information on earth faults from substations which is a regulatory requirement in Norway, "however, through UtiliKeeper, we also harvest important real time information from the substations' multi-instruments showing transformer load and different current- and voltage quality parameters."

Kamstrup Smart Grid Product Manager, Henrik Baek Joergensen explains: “until now, it has not been economically feasible for most utilities to remotely monitor and control secondary substations as such solutions required a variety of separate PLCs, data loggers, SCADA PC s and dedicated communication lines - very complicated to integrate, expensive and complicated to install and use. This is changing now. With UtiliKeeper®, we are able to provide a simple to use, but still advanced low cost solution with all of the features included in one device and with one easy-to-use interface. It’s based on standard Internet features; IP, Internet Explorer and standard e-mail for delivery of instant alarm information. We are expecting UtiliKeeper® to be a game changer”

Kamstrup mentions other UtiliKeeper® benefits as
•   The possibility to connect a variety of different sensors to UtiliKeeper® makes it possible to basically know everything you want to know about your substation.  
•   Remote access to all critical substation information helps managing work crew and reducing truck rolls and the cost of maintaining the grid by sending the right crew to the right location in a timely fashion and avoiding callbacks for nested outages.
•   Alarm functionality gives utilities early warnings so they can be proactive and solve problems before they escalate and become problematic, time-consuming and expensive to fix.
•   Saved money on communication expenses. UtiliKeeper® gathers everything within one box and there is only a need for one communication line from substation to operations center.
•   The open and interoperable interfaces allows for easy integration with your Smart Grid environment of choice.
•   It’s possible to upgrade UtiliKeeper® software remotely.

More information:
Senior Product Manager - Smart Grid, Henrik Baek Joergensen
E-mail: hbj@kamstrup.dk
Phone:  +4589931468

http://kamstrup.com/22095/utilikeeper-monitoring-of-secon...