Communications and control options for load management and distribution automation

Due to increasing pressures from fuel and capital costs, electric utilities are exploring several avenues that may offer relief from worsening ratios of peak to base load consumption patterns. At the same time, new devices based on technically sophisticated microelectronics seem to promise easy solutions to communications and control problems. Manufacturers of this type of equipment are eager to meet the large potential market with technological solutions but as yet the cost effectiveness of such solutions has not been demonstrated. The Department of Energy/Electric Power Research Institute (DOE/EPRI) sponsored Field Demonstration of Communication Systems for Distribution Automation, along with several (smaller) utility field trials are revealing much about the effectiveness of various types of communicatons systems, for load management and distribution automation and also about the problems of installation and customer acceptance. The five DOE/EPRI field demonstrations1 are in various stages of analysis and operation. One of the demonstrations, based on telephone communication2, completed the one year data acquistion period, July 31, 1979, and analysis for the final report is now in progress. Three different power-line carrier systems started the one year data acquisition period on July 1, 1979. The radio system is scheduled to start the one year data acquisition in September 1979.