Advanced Control Systems to Deliver Outage and Distribution Management Systems to Ontario's Cambridge and North Dumfries Hydro

ATLANTA, Aug. 27, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Advanced Control Systems (ACS) has been selected by Cambridge and North Dumfries Hydro (CND) to deliver state-of-the-art outage management (OMS) and distribution management (DMS) systems to the utility. The OMS/DMS will integrate fully into the utility's existing PRISM™ supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system (also from ACS) to enable CND to operate more efficiently and provide better outage information and more reliable power to their 52,500 customers.

"Our investment aims to directly benefit our customers by shortening restoration times and providing customers with timely updates on the location of outages and restoration status," said Ron Sinclair, Cambridge Vice President of Engineering. "The second phase of this project aims to take reliability even further, with technology that acts as a decision support system to assist CND's control room and field operating personnel with the monitoring and control of the electric distribution system to improve quality of service in terms of minimizing outage time and maintaining acceptable frequency and voltage levels." The first phase of this project is targeted to be live mid-2015.

The OMS will be fully integrated with the SCADA system, enabling Cambridge's System Control Operators to efficiently operate both systems on a common platform using a single source database. Viewing OMS data in real-time will more efficiently identify, predict, and address outage situations.

The second phase of the project will deliver advanced distribution management system (ADMS) functionality. The ADMS additions will feature:

• Three-phase unbalanced load flow modeling of the system to support advanced analysis and automation applications, such as integrated volt/VAR control (IVVC) and fault detection, isolation and restoration (FDIR) to improve network efficiency and quality of service.
• A distribution system simulator for operator training and planning scenarios to help prepare the utility to effectively handle emergencies and other contingencies.

"Cambridge is being quite progressive in their approach to grid reliability and customer service", said ACS CEO Jose Barbosa.  "In addition to the operational advantages provided by PRISM, they will use the system to provide their customers with a map-based view of outages and updates on expected restoration times." The OMS system will use ACS' GridVu Public™ software to provide CND customers with this timely information.

SOURCE Advanced Control Systems