EPB Chattanooga gets glimpse of smart grid savings

When a major storm impacted Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 2012, the organization experienced outages, but found that it had spent much less than normal to deal with them because of the smart grid systems. A year later, the company has managed to calculate the exact savings at $1.4 million,Jim Glass, manager of smart grid development at EPB Chattanooga, told the news source.

Using terminal servers to ensure smart grid savings
The challenging part about using smart grid systems to reduce costs is that transformer stations and various specialized utility technologies often use serial connections, but Ethernet is necessary for the real-time data delivery that makes the smart grid so effectively. If data is not reaching utility managers quickly enough, they will not be able to identify the outage and get workers into the field. As a result, terminal servers become an essential component of the smart grid, as they offer organizations the network connectivity they need to gain cost savings from the smart grid.

Perle offers a range of cost effective serial-to-Ethernet converters to help meet NERC-CIP compliance for the protection of critical cyberassets in substations.The IOLAN SDS HV/LDC Terminal Server is designed to meet harsh environments associated with Power Substations with attributes such as support for substation AC and DC voltage ranges, extended operating temperatures and meeting emission, immunity and safety approvals associated with substation IT equipment.