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Underground Distribution


Monitoring Underground Lines with SCADA

How SCADA can help prevent repairs and service disruptions BY RICHARD CLARK, InduSoft Underground transmission and distribution lines create unique challenges, as they require special insulation materials to protect conductors, and complex cooling systems because heat cannot be dissipated in free...

Vegetation Management


Vegetation Management on Transmission Lines

Using LiDAR technologies to enhance operations BY PHILIP CHARLTON, Utility Arborist Association In March 2014, utility vegetation managers from throughout North America gathered in Fort Worth, Texas to share their experience with the use of LiDAR (light detection and ranging) remote sensing...

Disaster & Recovery


Climate Crisis Threatens Canada’s Ice Roads for Indigenous Communities

The warming climate is rapidly transforming the landscape of northern Canada, particularly for Indigenous communities who rely on ice roads for critical supplies. These roads, made from snow and ice, are the only accessible routes during winter months, connecting remote First Nations to the outside...

Infrastructure & Technologies


Aging Infrastructure and Grid Modernization

Asset and risk management for electric utilities BY SIRI VARADAN, UISOL, & SERGE VANASSE, Clevest Aging transmission and distribution (T&D) infrastructure is a critical issue for electric utilities, resulting in the need for utilities to make decisions regarding the replacement, repair,...

Distribution Protection


Coping with Extreme Weather Events

How to optimize the entire outage lifecycle BY RICK NICHOLSON, Ventyx The extreme weather just keeps coming. In 2012, there were 11 outages due to severe weather costing at least $1 billion. The year of 2013 had its share as well. More and more, the scale and variety of such major events are...

Overhead Distribution


Outage Management: Restore Power in Less Time

Improving power grid reliability is a major goal of the electric power industry and can reduce economic losses, lost productivity, and customer inconvenience from power disruptions. For several utilities, Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG) funding accelerated the application of fault location,...

Overhead T&D

Aging Infrastructure: How to Save Aging Assets

Applying limited resources to critical, aging infrastructure

BY MASSOUD AMIN, IEEE Smart Grid, University of Minnesota

The Smart Grid’s contributions to improving electric utilities’ means of monitoring the condition of assets, providing enhanced situational awareness, and faster actionable intelligence have transformed the power industry’s concept of asset management from a largely passive, time-based approach to a more proactive, condition-based assessment.

Condition-based asset management offers a big leap in accuracy, improved and, therefore, greater power...

Overhead T&D Articles