This week, S&C is celebrating its centennial anniversary—and with it S&C’s engineering accomplishments, including the invention that started the company, the Liquid Power Fuse.
Back at the beginning of the 20th century, damaging flashovers following short circuits were common in utility substations, and sometimes catastrophic. The technologies needed to interrupt short circuits and protect the grid were inadequate and prone to malfunction. After a particularly bad fire in 1909 at a Commonwealth Edison substation in Chicago, the utility asked engineers Edmund O. Schweitzer and Nicholas J. Conrad to find a better way to tame high-voltage arcing. Together, they came up with the Liquid Power Fuse.
The challenges facing utilities today are different in many ways. Major advancements in electronics, software, and communications systems give utilities a much broader toolkit to improve the reliability and efficiency of electric power delivery systems. But the physics of electricity have not changed. High-voltage power grids carry enormous amounts of energy, and quality, well-engineered switching and protection products are required to manage the flow of electricity throughout the grid. You don’t have to search too long on YouTube to find videos that vividly highlight the results when electric power delivery goes awry.
In an era when the industry is focused on smart grid technologies—indeed, S&C is also making investments in this area—it’s worth acknowledging the importance of products like the power fuse. They aren’t glamorous and they’re not viewed as cutting edge, but they continue to play a vital role in ensuring the reliability of our grid and limiting the damage caused by short circuits. They are a workhorse on distribution grids because they’re economical and dependable.
We can’t predict what the grid will look like in 100 years, but we don’t expect the laws of physics will change. We do expect that power fuses will continue to play an important role in ensuring the reliability of electric power systems for years to come, even as use of smart grid technologies ranging from AMI to distribution automation expand and make power grids more reliable and efficient.
What products and technologies do you think will be most important for the grid over the next 100 years? Use the comment form to let us know.
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