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.
summary reviews and highlights from completed studies
