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Newton-Evans Role in Recent SMARTENERGY East Coast Conference

Chuck Newton moderated  a well-received session on Demand Side Management and Energy Efficiency Technologies for this New York City conference held on October 27th and 28th. The conference was hosted by the Spintelligent Company, publisher of Metering International.

The panel members for this session included Ron Zimmer, CEO of Ottawa-based CABA – the Continental Automated Buildings Association, Bill Scheffler, Director of North American Sales and Business Development for Sigma Designs, parent of  Z-Wave Alliance in California, and Margaret Jolly, Manager of Distributed Generation Programs for Consolidated Edison in New York City.  Ron Zimmer’s talk focused on understanding the evloution of the connected home market.  Bill Scheffler discussed how we can take energy management beyond the meter.  Margaret Jolly gave a presentation on ConEdison’s very strong DG initiatives.  The audience of about 110 officials from utilities, consulting firms, smart grid services providers and regulatory bodies posed several questions to the speakers and good give-and-take discussions ensued.

For more information visit www.smartgridcareers.com or www.spintelligent-events.com.

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Thinking Smart: The Outlook for Spending on Smart Grid Technologies in 2009 and Beyond

An article by Newton-Evans CEO Charles Newton titled Thinking Smart: The Outlook for Spending on Smart Grid Technologies in 2009 and Beyond was recently featured in Volume 9 of the Energy and Utilities Project magazine, an mThink publication sponsored by IBM. The majority of the article summarized the spending outlook for eight major components of the smart grid: control systems, smart grid applications, substation automation programs, substation IEDs and devices, AMI/AMR, protection and control, distribution network automation, and telecommunications infrastructure. Additionally, Mr. Newton provided a general picture of the types of initiatives that need to be taken by individual utilities on a case by case basis to put smart grid technology to work for them:

“I have often compared the evolution of the smart grid to the iterative process of building the international space station: a long term strategy, a flexible planning environment, responsive changes incorporated into the plan as technology develops and matures, properly phased.What function we might need is that of a skilled smart grid architect to oversee the increasingly complex duties of an effective systems planning unit within the utility organization.”

To obtain a copy of The Energy and Utilities Project 2009 visit www.UtilitiesProject.com and sign up for online membership.

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Newton-Evans Cited in Automation World Article

Newton-Evans was cited in an Automation World article titled, “Smart Grid Stimulus Funds to Provide Market Boost.” Chuck Newton was quoted as saying:

“The Smart Grid eventually will be built out. But utilities never rush into anything, for the simple reason that they’ve got to keep the lights on. They can’t take it out of service to rebuild it. So it’s got to be an iterative process, and that usually means multi-year efforts.”

Read the full article on the Automation World website.

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Available Reports & Current Survey Efforts

In addition to our most recently completed studies on Protective Relays and Smart Grid Capital Expenditures (samples of which are available on our Reports page) Newton-Evans Research is currently inviting electric utility officials involved with protective relays to participate in our “Back Page” relay study. After completing a study of the Worldwide Protective Relay Marketplace, a supplementary questionnaire consisting largely of questions asked by utility officials to utility officials has been designed to answer questions that fall into these categories: Equipment/Device related, Tripping/Control related, Settings/Analysis related, Strategy/Policy related, Testing/Maintenance related, Vendor/Manufacturer related, Distributed Generation related, and Generation related questions.

The mix of yes/no and short answer questions on the survey include:

What criteria do you use for replacing older electromechanical and solid state relays?

Does your utility use a redundant bay control unit?

Do you use communication processors to consolidate relay communications for SCADA?

How do you manage digital relay firmware upgrades for installed relays?

What strategy do you follow for improving the reliability and security of busbar protection?

Given the global dearth of power system engineers, please describe what your utility is doing to attract, develop, and train new relay and protection engineers?

your Utility use process based or condition based maintenance for your protection system?

Do you include transformer sudden pressure relays in your normal testing cycles?

Do you use localized data gathering at substations with automated logic to operate local station equipment?

What strategy do you use to overcome the problems created by the mixture of vendors, tools, generations, and interfaces?

Participating electric utilities will receive the summary findings from this study as a “thank you” from Newton-Evans.

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Electric Power Utilities Continue to “Stay the Course” with Projected Capital Spending Plans for Smart Grid Building Blocks

Some Key Project Deferrals Noted in Transmission and Distribution Infrastructure . . . Rebound Anticipated by mid-2010 for Transmission . . . Later into 2011 for Distribution Infrastructure

The views of 118 Officials from Electric Power Utilities in 36 Countries Grow Somewhat More Conservative Since December but Remain Upbeat for Continued Investment in “Smart-Grid” Components

Ellicott City, Maryland – 9 July, 2009. In spite of the weakened economic conditions in countries around the world, electric power utilities continue to make significant financial commitments in “smart grid” building blocks and related automation programs. The majority of the large public and private utilities participating in the June 2009 Newton-Evans study are poised to continue many of their long-term capital investment programs as had been originally planned back in January of 2008. However, in several instances, the projects have been deferred from their initial planned start-up dates.

In a new tracking study released today by the Newton-Evans Research Company, a significant majority of the 118 electric power grid officials from 36 countries participating in the CAPEX and O&M budget planning study indicated that capital spending for control systems, substation automation, smart grid-related programs, and advanced metering rollouts are largely on track albeit with some pushback in timing. However, several planned investments for transmission and distribution grid infrastructure components have been deferred for this year, but are expected to rebound perhaps as early as the fourth quarter of 2010.

Continue reading Electric Power Utilities Continue to “Stay the Course” with Projected Capital Spending Plans for Smart Grid Building Blocks

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POWERGRID Europe 2009


Newton-Evans Research Company CEO Charles Newton participated in the POWERGRID Europe joint plenary session, “Meeting the Energy Challenge in the Face of the Economic Downturn” on Wednesday, May 27th in Cologne, Germany. Mr. Newton was joined by Colette Lewiner, Vice President and Global Leader of the Energy, Utilities and Chemicals Global Sector Unit at Capgemini; Mr.Steve Bolze, President & CEO, Power & Water, GE Energy and Infrastructure, USA; Dr. Hans Bünting, Chief Financial Officer, RWE Innogy GmbH, Germany;M. Philippe Joubert, Executive Vice-President, Alstom, President, Alstom Power Sector, France; Dr. Uddesh Kohli, Former Chairman & Managing Director, Power Finance Corporation, India; and Dr. Werner Götz, Chief Operating Officer, Renewables EnBW AG, Germany.  More than 11,600 visitors attended this year’s conference. Visit www.powergrideurope.com

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Market Trends Digest

The first quarter 2009 issue of Market Trends Digest is now available. This issue includes a look back at our study of substation automation completed last year, as well as a look ahead at some interim findings from our study of protective relays which is now currently underway (scheduled for completion in May). Also included in this issue is an article by CEO Charles Newton and a brief look at Smart Grid expenditures and IT spending for Adminstrative and Operational activities in 2009 and 2013.

Click image to open .pdf in a new window.

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Where T&D Automation Is Headed: 2009 and Beyond

by Charles Newton

The financial environment and economic outlook
darken many segments of the national and global economies. Will the electric power industry significantly scale back planned capital expenditures and operations and maintenance spending on transmission and distribution automation? To find the answer, we conducted a global study of capital-expense budgets.

This article is featured in the March/April edition of EnergyBiz magazine, which you can download as a .pdf from their website: http://energycentral.fileburst.com/EnergyBizOnline/2009-2-mar-apr/Tech_Front_TandD_Headed.pdf

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Transmission Summit 2009

The newest edition of  the Transmission Summit Conference, was held in Washington, D.C. this past week.  A rousing panel discussion on the role of the Smart Grid in the world of electric power transmission included panel members John McDonald (GE Energy T&D), Robert Moisan (The Glarus Group), Charles Newton (Newton-Evans Research Company), and Michael Oster (Grid Storage Technologies) .   After introductory remarks from each panel member, the panelists at the March 12  session titled Implications of Smart Grid Technology for Transmission replied to questions submitted by the audience for another 60 minutes.  The session was moderated by Jim Murray, a partner with Scott Madden Inc.

For the complete agenda visit the Infocast website: www.infocastinc.com.