This week, SSS was in San Antonio at the American Public Power Association’s Engineering & Operations Vendor Expo. Over the 3-day event, we dove into sessions on communication and control, environment, generation and fuels, safety, transmission and distribution, system planning, and supply management. The sessions on Distribution Automation (DA) and IoT network management were particularly exciting.
Electrical and telecom engineers are incredibly vital to managing and protecting our new smart grid. While the grid guys maintain power and transmission substations – in addition to the physical layers of the network – telecom guys install communication connections and ensure end-to-end reliability of data transfer and related layers.
This past March, NERC proposed new revisions to help close the gaps in the CIP-003 Reliability Standard.
It’s so important to give back. This month, Second Sight made donations to McCurdy Elementary School in Florissant Missouri – so they could purchase 5 iPad tablets for their 2nd grade classroom.
Adventures into Wastewater Systems… have you ever thought about what it takes to keep a major riverfront city like St. Louis, Missouri free and clear of rising stormwater and run-off? Recently the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District (MSD) provided SSS with a private, behind-the-scenes look at their operations and exclusive tour of the two main pumping stations around the city of St Louis:
– The Bissell Point Pump Station
– Mill Creek Pumping Station
Second Sight Systems just completed a customer training event in Oklahoma, hosted by our friends at KAMO Power of Vinita, OK. Over 45 engineers and field technicians attended the two-day deep dive into the GE MDS Orbit and Master Station! Great questions and in-depth insight ensued. We definitely look forward to the next training event.
The utility industry is abuzz about GE MDS — their next generation communication product line that optimize data transmission and security. Here’s how the products are helping some of the biggest utilities right now.
This past October, SSS met with dozens of rural co-ops at the Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation’s Engineering and Operations Workshop. The conversation was unanimous — rural utilities urgently need SCADA upgrades, network security, and affordable radio solutions. To meet the demand, rural co-ops are looking to GE MDS (GE MCR) radios with built-in routing and firewalls to protect electrical distribution systems and reduce outages, but at a fraction of the cost of traditional IT network firewall devices and software.
October’s Hurricane Matthew put the smart grid to the ultimate test. The tropical cyclone packing sustained winds of up to 150mph cut off power to 2.2 million homes and businesses in the U.S. Southeast. In the final analysis, the smart grid performed well against such extreme weather. By making the grid self-healing, advanced sensors and automation helped utilities avert prolonged outages. Here’s how Florida Power & Light and other utilities were able to out-smart Hurricane Matthew and other storms.
The Internet of Things – IoT- has taken over Major League Baseball, allowing teams to score big wins on and off the field. While the Chicago Cubs clinched an epic World Series victory from the Cleveland Indians, Second Sight Systems celebrates both teams as they deploy new technology to gain a competitive advantage and realize operational efficiencies. Take a look.