Posted on by

Initial Findings – 2024 Study of P&C Usage Patterns and Trends

The initial group of fewer than 30 North American utility survey completions received as of September 18 represent a range of operational P&C methods and procedures as well as plans for electric grid protection and control, centering on protective relays.

Importantly, the initial group has indicated the following:

  • There are many thousands of electro-mechanical relays still in use throughout North American utilities, based on feedback from our initial respondents. In our opinion, that may mean as many as a quarter million e-m units continue in operation within T&D substations.
  • A growing percentage (20-25%+) of the first and second generations of microprocessor relays have been in operation for more than 15 years.
  • By the end of the study, we hope to have a ballpark range estimate of the number of protective relays in use across North America, at least those in transmission and distribution applications. At this point in time, it appears to me that well over 1.5 million units are likely to be installed in North American substations.

There are about 20 additonal topics covered in this year’s survey.  Following are the initial findings, based on fewer than 30 major utilities, but including a few TOP 10 from IOUs, public power utilities, and cooperatives.

Note in the chart (Q6) that engineering access to protective relays is largely enabled by both serial ASCII terminals and Ethernet Telnet ASCII terminals, following by Ethernet FTP.  This may well change once additional surveys are received.

Based on the early survey submissions, it is shaping up that North American utilities are continuing to keep separate the OT (Ethernet) networks from their IT-business process networks, as shown in Figure Q11.

Based on initial feedback, there is no single point of demarcation used by a majority of utilities as shown in Figure Q12.  Tallies for the control center is currently running a bit ahead of the substation as the point of demarcation between physical IT and OT networks in order to safely collect IT information from the OT networks.

Later this week, look for additional findings from our study participants.  If you are involved at least somewhat in P&C or substation engineering work at a North American utility, we invite you to participate in the 2024 survey as your views are important:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3PLYHXG.