Making it smarter
To Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. and other utilities like it, a smart electric grid is one that has fewer, shorter outages.
To many consumers, the term “Smart Grid” probably comes across as being an institutional buzzword.
But to Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. and other utilities like it, a smart electric grid is one that has fewer, shorter outages.
And OG&E is moving in that direction by using advanced equipment and technologies to upgrade its power distribution systems.
Earlier this month, Sean Trauschke, CEO of OGE Energy Corp. and OG&E, spoke about the effort before a group of legislators from energyproducing states who were meeting in Oklahoma City.
Trauschke talked about upgrades the utility is making to a portion of the system of lines it uses to distribute electricity in Arkansas. Eventually it plans to expand that effort across its service area not only there, but across its service area in Oklahoma, too.
The utility stretches over 30,000 square miles using about 55,000 miles of line that serves about 840,600 customers.
Trauschke said part of the reason the concept is getting attention from utilities now is because emerging technologies in equipment and software are becoming more widely available.
Utilities like OG&E, he noted, are always looking for ways to improve the affordability and reliability of the services they provide.
Smart meters, which collect and report power statuses and usage levels for each customer the utility serves, were a big step forward for the company.
He noted that some electricity providers in North Carolina that OG&E has been helping after Hurricane Florence still don’t have that technology and explained how that can slow a utility’s response to outages caused by severe weather.
“Back in the old days (before smart meters), we required our customers to call us whenever they experienced an outage,” he said. “Engineers would get big circuit maps out, identify where the outages were, then would send a troubleshooter to walk a circuit.”
The troubleshooter would radio back, and then the utility would dispatch a line truck.
“With our smart meter technology, we know where those outages are when they happen,” Trauschke said. “And in some cases, we actually have fault detection equipment out there that identifies where the fault is, so we are able to dispatch a line crew directly there.”
Added to that, Trauschke said, are circuit “reclosers” designed to attempt to restore service on a line where power has been interrupted, either by correcting the fault or by rerouting power through alternate lines.
“It almost is like a selfhealing type of thing,” he said.
The utility also is using an electrified barrier around some of its substations that aim to keep snakes and other varmints away from its gear.
Ultimately, the upgrades are designed to boost the utility’s abilities to meet customers’ expectations — an ever more complex target, given varied ways the power is used.
“It is changing by the day, it seems like,” Trauschke said. “We used to think of electricity as just something coming into a home that the customer would use to turn on a light, a television, and to keep the house cool.
“Now we have customers, like Tinker (Air Force Base), who are focused on resiliency, others who like all the gadgets and bells and whistles, and then we have customers like data centers who require a high quality of power. While it still is electricity, we are providing it in different manners to a lot of different customers.”
Trauschke explained that having reliable and affordable power is important not only to OG&E but to communities across its service area, because that help spurs future growth.
“We are seeing growth. I think what we (all of us, together) have to do, is, to always think in the long term and make good decisions that will continue that momentum,” he said.