Transmission Improvements

The transmission system is the interstate of the energy grid. Like highways that enable large commercial trucks to transport goods from factories and warehouses to your neighborhood retail stores, the large interconnected power lines that make up the transmission system carry large amounts of high-voltage electrical energy from power generation stations to your neighborhood substations. Outages on the transmission system affect many customers.

In the same way highways require regular maintenance and larger and stronger bridges over time, the transmission network also requires equipment maintenance and improvements. Some maintenance is routine, such as checking equipment fluid levels and replacing fuses. Other improvements involve adding updated and more robust equipment to the transmission system so that outages become extremely rare.

Transmission system improvements include modernized systems and electronic devices that provide grid technicians and operators more system information and new capabilities. With the new ability to monitor and adjust equipment remotely, transmission system operators are able to make system operations more efficient and more reliable than ever before.

Benefits

• Improves storm hardening and resiliency of transmission grid
• Improves flood mitigation for flood-prone areas
• Reduces maintenance costs and increases efficiency as upgraded equipment enables maintenance to be performed based on need, rather than based on a schedule
• Increases defenses against substation intrusion, physical attacks to infrastructure and cyberattacks that affect the way the grid operates

Upgrades will increase reliability by improving the weakest parts of the transmission system.

Some of these improvements include:

Phasor Measurement Unit

A combination of hardware, software and communication devices track high-speed, time-stamped transmission system measurements. These are used for evaluating system stability and help our operators take action to maintain reliability of the transmission system. 

Condition-Based Monitoring

Devices that communicate with monitoring and analytics systems to examine equipment signals for operational failure.

Protective Device Upgrades

These state-of-the-art protective devices can operate remotely and capture timely system data – unlike the current mechanical devices. This drives better, more efficient system performance.