Now that we tag and report in our SCADA, we are saving an average of 1.5 hours of drive time per incident as we only need to drive out once rather than twice or more to fix any issue.
The Challenge
Wake Electric Membership Corporation is an electric distribution cooperative owned and controlled by 49,000+ consumer-members in the Durham, Franklin, Granville, Johnston, Nash, Vance, and Wake counties of North Carolina. The utility monitors over 52,000 meters across 3,900 miles of electrical lines, with 19 substations, 71 feeders, 5 reclosers, and 1 tie recloser, and manages a peak load of 220 MW.
The utility wanted to increase fieldworker confidence and safety during storms and other extreme weather events – when the potential risk and danger to line crew and fieldworkers increased significantly – by having the option to close devices remotely rather than manually. It also wanted to ensure that all field workers knew the direction from which a device was being energized.
The Solution
Wake Electric made SurvalentONE SCADA an integral part of their control room operations and safety procedures. Line workers and operators are trained on the system from day one to log into WebSurv, which is installed on every company-issued phone and tablet, and to navigate to the SCADA system from there. The job safety and training team updates the program regularly so that the crew is always aware of new SCADA features and control room processes. The field crew and operators report an increase in confidence in the company’s safety measures when performing their work as a result of this training.
The safety team has also enacted a policy that is only possible because of SurvalentONE SCADA and WebSurv’s interconnectivity – requiring the placement of hot line tags on any downline device from work to be performed. Because all the network devices are modeled in SCADA, line workers can pull up any device on their phone or laptop and check for hot line tags before commencing work. Wake Electric has also set their SCADA to restrict tag removal without approval to ensure no hot line tags are removed by accident.
In addition to protecting their field crew, Wake Electric also credits the policy with a massive reduction in “windshield time”, reporting a 30 – 50% reduction in line worker travel time since the implementation of SCADA.
Wake Electric Membership Corporation is an electric distribution cooperative with 49,000+ members in 7 counties of North Carolina. The utility monitors over 52,000 meters across 3,900 miles of electrical lines, and manages a peak load of 220 MW.
