GTC Upgrades Its Communications and Reduces SAIDI and SAIFI

Scope
231 substations, 300 to 700Kv
702 protection relays
40 SMP Gateways

Protocol and Devices

SEL 121,221,321,251,311,321,351,387 and 587, DNP3,
TEJAS, ABB MDAR, ALSTOM, USI DFR, HATHAWAY DFR.

In Service: 2003

www.cooperpowereas.com

About GTC
Georgia Transmission Corporation (GTC) is a not-for-profit
cooperative owned by and serving 39 electric membership
corporations (EMCs) in Georgia. GTC provides reliable and
competitively priced electric transmission and associated
services to its member-owners. GTC owns more than 2,500
miles of transmission line and has access to approximately
16,000 miles of transmission line through Georgia's
Integrated Transmission System.
www.gatrans.com

The Challenge

The Solution

In 1999, Georgia Transmission Corporation (GTC) upgraded

its WAN to make it a frame relay network, which gave
remote maintenance capabilities to RTUs, protection relays,
revenue metering and digital fault recorders.
Following the implementation of the Frame Relay Network,
GTC decided to explore substation automation technologies
that would be highly reliable, readily available, relatively
inexpensive and easily deployable for existing and future
substation design. GTC began putting protection relays on
the Frame Relay Network to be accessible from the
corporate intranet desktops via a secure website.
Operations, Protection & Control, Substation Maintenance
and Electronic Maintenance departments were highly
interested in the possibilities that this access provided, and
thus challenged GTC to provide relay data that is currently
not available via traditional SCADA.
GTC decided to look for a solution to retrieve the event files
and waveforms produced by the SEL relays that it was
installing in its substations.

GTCs Requirements
With the Frame Relay communications infrastructure
providing direct access to each device, GTC needed an
automated, effective way to get the data in from the IEDs to
the operations, protection, control, and maintenance teams.
The solution had to be adaptable to other existing relays,
SER and DFR devices, and had to provide complete data
storage and management capabilities.

The Event Manager module of the Yukon IED Manager Suite

uses the Frame Relay network to retrieve data and event
files from the relays and stores the data in an industrystandard Microsoft SQL ServerTM database. In substations
where an SMP Gateway is installed, event files are "pushed"
to Event Manager and processed as soon as they are
detected. For other substations, Event Manager either
performs scheduled or on-demand data acquisitions.
Event Manager automatically notifies key personnel via email
whenever data is available. It provides a full-featured data
management application and a web-based corporate wide
access to event data. Event Manager also converts event
reports from the SEL format to COMTRADE.

SAIDI and SAIFI Down 25%

Since 2004, Event Manager has been providing 40 key
users with real-time access to fault information that permits
a real time look at faults on the system.
With the use of fault information and other studies of system
performance, the corporation has been able to install
equipment or implement plans to either reduce outages or
reduce outage duration impacting consumers. Having this
information has allowed the corporation to make better
decisions to impact outage reduction and select the most
cost effective action to resolve outage problems.

Index
SAIDI
SAIFI

2004
13.64
0.370

2006
10.15
0.279

Difference (%)
25.6% reduction
24.6% reduction

Since 2004, GTCS SAIDI and SAIFI indices have

improved by 25%.

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B1100-07401 April 2009 Supercedes 10/08