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Consolidated Edison Co. of New York (Con Edison), one of the largest combination electric and gas utilities in the U.S., serves the five boroughs of New York City and most of Westchester County, consisting of approximately 2.5-million residential and 400,000-commercial customers. In 1985, the utility installed a Genesis-by-Itron pilot Distribution Monitoring System. By 1988, that system was fully expanded to include five operating divisions in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens and Westchester Counties. Since that time, Con Edison has gained several years of operating history using this packet-radio-based, 900-MHz distribution monitoring system.
From its inception, the Con Edison system successfully has reduced outage time and the frequency of outages, as well as provided the ability to dispatch crews more effectively. The system monitors the vacuum reclosers on the 27-, 12-, and 4-kV overhead feeder systems. Con Edison's overhead distribution system consists primarily of two, three or five recloser loops fed by two distinct feeders. The more typical arrangement is a five-recloser loop consisting of two feeder reclosers, two midpoint reclosers and a tie recloser. There are presently 19 recloser loops operating in the Staten Island Division, where the most recent development is taking place. This development is an RD program to demonstrate the improvements in operation possible by the addition of two-way radio communications and control capability. This auto-loop management system will include expansion of the existing Genesis Distribution Monitoring System to provide remote control of vacuum reclosers and of sectionalizing switches located between the vacuum reclosers in Con Edison's overhead vacuum recloser auto-loop.
OBJECTIVE OF THE PROJECT
Although Con Edison had been able to achieve considerable improvement in operating efficiency from the existing Genesis Distribution Monitoring System, internal studies indicated that even greater benefits could he achieved with a full auto-loop management system. The purpose of this project was to define, develop and implement additions to the existing intelligent auto-loop system and the associated Genesis-by-Itron, MHz MAS communications system. While the existing monitoring system provides the dispatcher eyes to see what is taking place anywhere in the system, it is still necessary to send crews into the field, many times to several locations. A two-way communications system would enable Con Edison to remotely control vacuum reclosers and motorized sectionalizing switches, and, at the...