Around the world, both governments and utilities are striving to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the electricity sector through renewable and sustainable generation technologies. While these efforts have resulted in significant progress, there is still a substantial amount of work left to be done to fully decarbonize the grid while delivering affordable and reliable power to customers.

The North American electric grid is a remarkable achievement. Spreading across the entire continent, the complex mix of generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure continues to deliver reliable power to customers in even the most remote locations.

Despite significant investments in safety, utility substations remain a hazardous environment. With high voltages and the potential for catastrophic failure, utilities must mitigate the risk of injury or death when operating in or around a substation.

Electrical utilities across North America are making significant investments in transmission and distribution (T&D) infrastructure. Growing demand for electrical power, stronger regulation, and the proliferation of renewable energy sources are placing added strain on aging infrastructure. In response, the industry is moving to enhance reliability, increase capacity, and reduce the cost of maintenance and repairs.

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 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 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.

In the US alone, more than 55,000 substations and 7 million miles of high voltage transmission and distribution lines transmit more than $400 billion of electricity each year.