Newton-Evans Research Company introduces its new summary of findings and observations of transmission and distribution monitoring and control systems used in many of the world's key electric power utilities. This study includes findings from more than 200 North American power utilities and 50-plus international utilities from 41 countries.
Highlights from some of the 18+ individual topics researched in the global study of mission critical, real-time electric utility operational systems include the following:
- OUTAGE MANAGEMENT: Almost thirty percent of the international utilities surveyed this year have implemented a separate outage management system (OMS). About 25% of the group plans to implement OMS as a separate system from SCADA/EMS by 2007.
- GENERATION MANAGEMENT: Generation management systems (GMS) are also experiencing an increased level of activity this year, at least among those vertically integrated domestic North American utilities serving more than one half million customers. Most others (75%) continue to rely on automatic generation control (AGC) applications resident on their distribution SCADA systems for linking to power plant-based control systems or related power supply resources.
- EXTERNAL SERVICES REQUIRED: By mid-2005, about one-third of the international respondents, and one half of the North American respondents indicated a current need for one or more of the nine listed services that could be available from external service providers. For the North American respondents now requiring these services, training services were viewed as most important (34%), followed by long-term maintenance agreements; (25%) and installation services; (21%).
- Overall Spending for Control Systems: Overall spending for SCADA and EMS systems sold to the world community of electric utilities and independent transmission systems operators during January 2003-August 2005 reached more than $1.4 billion USD, based on Newton-Evans database of more than 210 awards recorded in 50 countries for this period. More than 50% of the total amount was awarded using open bid procurements.
Source: Energy Business Reports
