Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Inc. (SEL) showcased its contributions to the Xcel Energy SmartGridCity™ during the 2008 Republican and Democratic political conventions in Denver and Minneapolis/St. Paul. Xcel Energy demonstrated its smart grid solutions in a portable display close to the convention sites. Convention delegates, elected officials from around the country, and the news media visited the display.

As a Smart Grid Consortium partner, SEL promotes distribution automation solutions?including recloser controls, protective relays, and information processors?that improve distribution reliability as part of a smart grid. These solutions rapidly isolate faults, restore power, monitor demand, and maintain and restore stability. The smart grid monitors and controls the electric power system, providing analytics, situational awareness, and asset management to improve power delivery. Distributed intelligence facilitates reliable control of advanced generation technologies.

"Our mission at SEL for twenty-five years," states Erik Newman, SEL vice president of sales and customer service, "has been to make electric power safer, more reliable and more economical. The opportunity to really focus on the reliability aspect as part of SmartGridCity, along with the chance to display these innovations along with our partners at the conventions, is very exciting for our company."

Xcel Energy's first SmartGridCity in Boulder, Colorado, showcases improved grid performance, power reliability, and conservation that result from applying smart grid technologies.

"Today's substation control systems do much more than protect or meter the system," says Dave Whitehead, SEL vice president of research and design. "The SmartGridCity idea gives us a platform to highlight how all those local capabilities can be integrated into a complete system in an economical and secure fashion."

SEL serves the electric power industry worldwide through the design, manufacture, supply, and support of products and services for power system protection, monitoring, control, automation, and metering. SEL offers unmatched local technical support, a worldwide, ten-year product warranty, and a commitment to making electric power safer, more reliable, and more economical.

Xcel Energy established the Smart Grid Consortium earlier this year, bringing together leading technologists, engineering firms, business leaders, and IT experts. In addition to SEL, other consortium members currently include Accenture, Current Group, GridPoint, OSIsoft, and Ventyx. The group is charged with making Xcel Energy's "smart grid" vision a reality.

Fri Nov 21 07:16:00 CST 2008