After a major storm, electrical utilities must rapidly diagnose and repair damage to critical infrastructure to restore power and mitigate the effects of large-scale outages. With trees down, roads flooded, and traffic at a standstill, it is often difficult for maintenance and repair crews to travel to remote substations to conduct physical inspections. Because they lack visibility ahead of time, , they may drive to the remote site and discover little or no damage, that they lack a part required to conduct a repair, or that they cannot access it due to safety concerns.

Systems With Intelligence demonstrated how power utilities can transition to a Condition-Based Maintenance program at the 2022 Southern Company Technical Conference Trade Show last month.

Systems With Intelligence showcased its line of advanced thermal and visual monitoring solutions at the 2022 Duke Energy Regulated and Renewable Energy TechX Conference last month.

Advanced thermal and visual sensors allow utilities to monitor the condition of remote substations from a centralized location. With continuous, real-time thermal and visual data, operations and maintenance teams can allocate resources more effectively, reduce the cost of maintenance and repairs, and improve reliability through condition-based maintenance programs.

In most electrical utilities, a significant share of the overall operations and maintenance (O&M) budget is allocated to conducting inspections, maintenance, and repairs at substations. Keeping this critical infrastructure up and running is vital but challenging work, as utilities must ensure that high-value assets are operating correctly in remote locations that are difficult to access.

Utility substations play a vital role in the transmission and distribution of electricity to customers, businesses, and communities. However, keeping these substations up and running can be challenging, especially when they are in remote locations far from other infrastructure.

Utility substations play a vital role in transmitting and distributing power to thousands of customers across wide geographic regions. High-value assets, such as transformers, capacitor banks, bushings, CVT and load tap changers, to name only a few, must be regularly inspected, maintained, and repaired to mitigate the risk of severe failures and outages.

Critical infrastructure, such as power generating facilities, high voltage transmission lines, and utility substations present attractive targets for vandals and other malicious actors. Damage or disruption to these facilities can have wide-ranging consequences to customers, businesses, and society and cost utilities in repairs, fines, and other expenses.

The Operations group at a midsized electrical utility is responsible for monitoring and maintaining numerous remote substations across a wide geographic region. As the substation infrastructure ages and demand for reliable power generation grows, maintenance and repair crews are under increasing pressure to avoid outages and ensure the system is fully functional.

The North American power grid is under increasing stress. Aging infrastructure is being asked to do more with less as demand for power grows and reliable access to electricity impacts nearly all aspects of our daily lives.