Presentation: DobleARMS and PI System Bring Standards-Based HV Asset Management to TVA

The Tennessee Valley Authority, plans, builds, operates, and maintains, part of the electric power system in the United States.  This network comprises the keystone of all other critical infrastructures in the United States.  The equipment and subsystems that comprise the power system are aging at an alarming rate.  The 500,000V power system, which makes up the backbone of bulk transmission system, will turn 50 next year and extend the problem of asset revitalization to these capital intensive assets.  This comes at a period of shifting load patterns and changes in generation strategies that are calling upon these aging assets to perform to their limits.  Additionally, increases in costs to the utility as well as a host of other drivers are making the competition for capital resources fierce.  To optimize both its CAPEX and OPEX resources, as well as better understand and mitigate risks associated with management of its transmission assets, the TVA is moving towards a near real-time asset health process.  To help enable this vision, TVA is partnering with Doble Engineering Co. to pilot their dobleARMS solution.  dobleARMS, through its use of OSIsoft technology to include the PI System and AF-SDK, provides a method for standards based integration that leverages information from disparate enterprise datasets, online monitoring, and protective relaying that eases the burden of integration while providing actionable near real-time information about its assets.  The goal is for this information to be used across the enterprise, from allowing the system operator additional insight into the health of the transformer to helping the planner to optimize OPEX and CAPEX work and up to the executive to better manage asset risk through replacement strategy.