With a warm welcome to our newest report clients from China, United Arab Emirates, Czech Republic, and Japan, along with assignments from several of our long-term North American and European clients, Newton-Evans staff is keeping up with the workload despite two record blizzards affecting day-to-day life and work in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. over the past week.
Our client-focused research activities over the first six weeks of 2010 have included topics ranging from distribution automation, to DMS, an update on demand response, plans for substation automation, a review of apparatus monitoring and diagnostics, to a synopsis of legacy electric utility application software market size and shares. In addition, the company is focused on two multi-client studies: First, the newest round of CAPEX studies, with participation and assistance now obtained from utility officials in more than 25 countries. Secondly, a new study of transmission planning in the USA and Canada will soon be available.
Some interesting electric power marketplace facts uncovered during the early weeks of 2010 include:
- Size of the global installed base of large power transformers
- Number of large power plants in countries around the world – to accompany our country-specific substation counts
- Extent of Industrial power delivery micro-grids
- Extent of intelligent electronic devices being deployed for distribution network automation.
Newton-Evans Research remains cautiously optimistic for an upturn in global re-investment by electric power utilities and industrials during 2010. The industry should see improvements over 2009 performance, at any rate.
We have attended the first major conference of the year held in the USA at NIST and sponsored by IEEE PES. March will be a busy lead in to springtime. First, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. will be hosting its annual Workshop in Protection and Automation. Chuck is planning to discuss results of a recent international protection engineering community-wide study with the attendees to this conference.
Next will be the new Electric Light and Power Executive Conference preceding the Distributech 2010 Conference coming up in March. Chuck will be speaking at the EL&P conference with a presentation entitled “Re-Investing in our Electric Utilities – Where do We Stand Now?” At Distributech, Chuck will speak on “CAPEX Outlook for Smart Grid Investment.”
Interestingly, two recent plant tours were completed during area visits – S&C Electric in Chicago, and Southern States Electric, just south of Atlanta. Both displayed an excellent use of production technology and automation where practical, workplace concern for the dedicated blue collar workforce and the use of high quality testing methods to ensure reliable equipment in the field.
Over the course of his career, Chuck has visited more than 300 industrial plants. “I always look forward to factory tours and visits, and have since a youth in Detroit, when I made my first visit to an automobile production plant. In college, my favorite course was Industrial Economics, taught by the world-famous “steel priest” William T. Hogan, SJ, who had founded and headed up Fordham University’s highly regarded Industrial Economics Research Institute.” Father Hogan counseled five U.S. presidents on tax and steel matters and served as an advisor to many agencies of federal, state and local governments and to major steel producers around the world until his passing in 2002. (For more information see http://www.library.fordham.edu/archives/hogan.html ).
summary reviews and highlights from completed studies
