New Software from DC Systems Increases Grid Safety During High Fire Risk and Other Natural Disasters

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Feb. 5, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- DC Systems, a leading provider of intelligent energy management software for power systems and grid-operators, today announced a new product to bring increased safety and resilience to energy operations during periods of high fire risk and other dangerous weather conditions.

Watchtower analyzes available environmental reporting data in real time and autonomously implements mitigation strategies, such as preventing arcing and sparking in the field due to equipment operations.

Watchtower implements the ability to automatically disable the reclosing of field switching, or cutting power completely should conditions exceed critical levels. The product also incorporates real-time reporting, notifying operators of system status via a graphical user interface and can issue control tags to make operators aware that a mitigation strategy has been implemented. 

The robust utility-scale software not only reduces wildfire risk, but also risk from ice storms, hurricanes, floods, and other disasters. "During times of high fire risk, Watchtower disables automated field switch operations that could result in an arcing fault," said Douglass Campbell, Founder and CTO.

Watchtower was developed as a direct response to the demands of utility customers, who require better tools to respond to extreme weather events.  "We began the development of this product after the Sonoma County wildfires of 2017, automating the removal of risk conditions associated with switching operations that could lead to fires," said company CEO Ken Munson. "We're proud to have developed Watchtower within this past year, and have already begun to deploy this in the market with a major west coast utility before the coming fire season."

Watchtower is the latest product to join the company's robust product suite for intelligent energy management, which already includes software for data acquisition, substation management, distribution automation, transmission and distribution, enterprise data management, power generation, renewable generation and energy storage.

Watchtower and the full suite of software solutions from DC Systems will be on display this week at Distributech 2019, in booth 11921. 

About DC Systems
Since 1990, DC Systems, Inc. (www.dcsystems.com) has been a trusted partner to utilities, EPCs, large power producers and energy users, with more than 100 utility customers and 400 projects worldwide. DC Systems develops utility-grade, vendor-agnostic, real-time software for power system and grid-interconnection, telemetry, analysis, monitoring, control, and communication gateways. The company's Real-Time Smart Energy Suite™ (RT|SES) applications dynamically optimize grid operations, from edge devices to substations to control centers and solve some of the electric industry's most difficult challenges with the real-time data acquisition, analysis and control.  The company provides solutions for distribution automation, grid reconfiguration and restoration, conservation voltage reduction, load balancing, substation automation, and the coordination of enterprise data and control across multiple utility OT and IT systems. Applications include SCADA, Substation Automation, Distribution Automation solutions such as Auto-Sectionalizing and Restoration, and Distributed Energy Control Systems for energy storage, Virtual Power Plants, DERMS, and Microgrids.

Contact:
Tim Gnatek
415-342-6632
[email protected]

SOURCE DC Systems

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