Smart Grid
Self-Healing Smart Grid Studied
A Washington state co-op is using some of its federal smart grid grant to test a fledgling reliability technology on an island it serves.
A smart grid grant is helping a Washington state co-op adapt ”self-healing” technology to improve reliability on Fox Island. (Photo By: Peninsula Light Co.)
Peninsula Light Co., Gig Harbor, is spending some of its $1 million grant from the Department of Energy to test automated restoration, or “self-healing” technology, on Fox Island.
The technology automatically isolates an outage and reroutes power from another circuit until electricity is restored to most members—all in a matter of seconds.
The benefit of the technology is that when a power outage occurs, not all the homes and businesses served by a feeder will lose electricity. The technology, also called “self-restoration,” is used by some investor-owned utilities, including Duke Energy.
“The sensors detect a problem and the grid isolates an outage and keeps the power flowing to the greatest number of customers,” said Jonathan White, director of member services at Peninsula Light Co. “Only those accounts closest to the outage will lose power.”
Currently, only two feeders serve Fox Island. One crosses a bridge, and the other, a submarine cable under Puget Sound, will be replaced by June. Reliability there is a challenge because “on the mainland, you have more options of being able to redirect power,” White explained.
The five-year smart grid grant enables the co-op to heed members’ call for power reliability. According to a survey the co-op conducts every two years, members have consistently shown a low level of satisfaction with reliability, White said.
“Replacing the 40-year-old submarine cable, undergrounding the most vulnerable sections of the island’s distribution system, and deploying this new self-healing technology will improve the island’s reliability and member satisfaction,” White said.
The co-op has selected the equipment and software to implement the technology and hopes to install them by this fall.
The Fox Island grant was part of a larger $89 million award in stimulus package funding given to the Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project, a 13-member consortium, which includes the co-op.
Tags: Power Supply, Smart Grid