Bird-Line Collision Guidebook

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Avian Power Line Interaction Committee (APLIC) released an updated guidance document, “Reducing Avian Collisions with Power Lines: State of the Art in 2012.” This manual, originally published in 1994, identifies best practices and provides specific guidance to help electric utilities and cooperatives, federal power administrations, wildlife agencies and other stakeholders reduce bird collisions. The service worked with APLIC, a voluntary partnership among the utility industry, wildlife resource agencies, conservation groups and manufacturers of avian protection products, to revise the guidance with the most current published science and technical information. Since the early “Ëœ70s, the electric utility industry and wildlife agencies including the service, conservation groups, universities and manufacturers of avian-protection products have worked together to understand the causes of bird-power line collisions and electrocutions and to develop ways of preventing bird mortalities, as well as associated power outages.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

High-efficiency, Low-cost Sensors

IUS Technologies plans to revolutionize the U.S. utility market by delivering highly efficient and accurate distribution automation technology. The company’s VS1000 and VS3000 products interface with leading smart grid technologies to create operational efficiencies, optimal capacity and system reliability-all with consistent power quality. The Born Smart VS series of remote voltage sensors will allow power companies to monitor voltage at the end of the line or edge of the grid with a 0.3 percent accuracy. The VS1000 and VS3000 sensors streamline the use of utility radio bandwidth with unsolicited response, which reduces communication loads up to 95 percent. This programmable notification feature automatically reports grid thresholds or dead-band limits, which saves considerable time, bandwidth and resources. The more sophisticated VS3000 allows deeper, more complex programming options and 0.3 percent accuracy.

IUS Technologies

Switch Barrier Kits

Brooks Utility Products’ new test switch end barrier kits allow utilities to retrofit existing switches installed in the field with an easy-to-use, snap-in design. The pending ANSI C12.09 standard answers a growing safety concern of separating voltage switches when adjacent to current switch or another voltage switch at a different potential. The new standard is expected to take effect in early 2013.

Brooks Utility Products

Enterprise Energy Management Software

Schneider Electric’s PowerLogic ION EEM version 4.0 R2 is the enterprise energy management software that unites business and energy strategies across the enterprise. The software is an energy data warehousing application capable of performing wide-area analysis of events and conditions, which gives stakeholders from management to operations actionable energy and power reliability intelligence. Energy managers can use the software to allocate energy costs accurately across energy cost centers, uncover energy efficiency opportunities, isolate power quality and reliability problems, and drive cost and risk reduction strategies. PowerLogic ION EEM complements and extends the benefits of existing energy-related data assets. These can include power monitoring and control systems, metering systems, substation automation and supervisory control and data acquisition systems, building and process automation systems, utility billing systems, weather services, spot market energy-pricing feeds, and enterprise business applications. Fault-tolerant algorithms ensure data quality while personalized dashboards with innovative visualization and modeling tools help accurately monitor, validate, predict and control energy-related expenses and manage reliability risks.

Schneider Electric