GridSense's Australian operations recently won a bid valued at $325,000 to initially supply a local utility company with over 250 TransformerIQ (TIQ) units for a pilot to monitor distribution transformers. The pilot will arm the utility with critical network information with an anticipated further rollout of TIQ units across the utility's distribution network in late 2014 and 2015.
The primary objectives of the pilot are to obtain information which will:
(a) Enhance network operations (such as fault identification, remediation and recovery).
(b) Reduce CAPEX and OPEX through better network planning and asset utilization.
(c) Improve customer service and revenue assurance.
Following a successful pilot, it is anticipated that a full rollout would focus on the customer's transformers rated at 50kVA or greater which represent a universe of approximately eleven thousand (11,000) distribution transformers.
The backbone of the system is Grid InSite (GIS), a powerful device management platform that collates pertinent transformer information from each TIQ and yields performance parameters based on transformer name plate rating in quasi real-time for quick assessment of network performance.
