Southern California Edison
Unveils Nation’s Smartest Neighborhood Electricity Circuit
Rosemead,
CA: Southern California Edison (SCE) has designed and installed
the nation’s most advanced neighborhood electricity
circuit. The pioneering project, known as “Circuit of
the Future,” recently began delivering power to 1,420
residential and business customers in Southern California’s
Inland Empire, the nation’s fastest growing urban region.
“A high-tech world can no longer afford a low-tech electricity
grid,” said John E. Bryson, chairman and chief executive
officer of Edison International, the parent company of Southern
California Edison. “With smart grid technology, power
outages will be fewer and shorter. Because advanced digital
technology can react more quickly than human operators, potential
problems can be identified, analyzed and isolated before they
become significant power outages.”
Much like a household electrical circuit, utility distribution
circuits are individual segments of larger power grids that
are controlled with on-off switches and protected by circuit
breakers. They carry power from neighborhood substations to
homes and businesses. SCE’s 50,000-square-mile power
delivery network is subdivided into 4,200 such circuits, each
connecting and delivering power to approximately 1,500 residential
and business customers.
The US Department of Energy provided almost $1 million in
research and development funds in support of the SCE smart
circuit project.
“Projects such as Southern California Edison’s
Circuit of the Future will enhance the reliability and security
of our nation’s electric systems,” said US Department
of Energy Assistant Secretary Kevin Kolevar. “Demonstrating
how advanced technologies will perform under real-world grid
conditions is an important next step toward achieving President
Bush’s goal of accelerating the penetration of advanced
technologies to modernize our electric infrastructure. I applaud
SCE for its vision and leadership in this effort.”
SCE is investing at record levels in its neighborhood power
distribution system.
“It is shortsighted to invest billions in the same old
circuit designs and components when our customers are investing
in advanced digital equipment,” said Ron Litzinger,
SCE’s senior vice president of transmission and distribution.
“The goal of all of our smart grid initiatives is a
power delivery system as advanced as the devices our customers
plug into it.”
SCE engineers built five advanced technologies into the Circuit
of the Future that promise to give customers surer electricity
service, fewer outages with faster service restoration and
lower future costs than would otherwise occur.
New Technologies
• At the heart of the Circuit of the Future is a digital
systems controller that functions like the circuit’s
brain to identify, analyze and isolate circuit problems.
• One of the technologies this “circuit brain”
uses is an advanced fiber optic communication system that
allows grid operators to respond more quickly to changing
circuit conditions.
• The Circuit of the Future is the first U.S. distribution
circuit to use powerful new surge protection devices called
fault current limiters to rapidly sense and isolate problems.
• Another new system the Circuit of the Future brain
controls is duct bank temperature monitoring making it possible
to manage Edison’s power grid more efficiently.
• The circuit is capable of using plug-and-play distributed
generation much like hooking up a portable generator to an
entire circuit.
In addition to providing more reliable service for our customers,
smart grid technology is also safer for the public and for
SCE employees who work on the electrical system,” said
Bryson. “And yet more exciting advances are on the horizon.
Smart grid technology will eventually help make it possible
for utilities to integrate larger amounts of intermittent
renewable energy from sources such as wind and solar into
our grids.”
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