Investor-Owned Utility Outsources Substation Engineering to S&C.

Background

With a General Service Agreement in place, a large investor-owned electric utility in the southeastern United States began outsourcing a significant portion of its substation engineering work to S&C’s Power Systems Services Division in March 2000. The utility had three major objectives for entering into this agreement with S&C, specifically:

To allow its engineering staff to be re-directed to high priority system operation and maintenance issues
To effectively increase its project engineering department’s capacity
To allow its engineering department to meet aggressive project schedules.

In the past, the utility had been reluctant to outsource such services out of concern that consultants would not be able to perform engineering services meeting or exceeding current in-house design quality standards, nor would they be able to conform to the utility’s drawing and inventory management systems.

S&C worked with the utility’s engineers to develop design standards and a communication plan to ensure consistent, repeatable, and high-quality performance on all projects. S&C’s engineers easily adapted their design approach to conform to the utility’s requirements, integrating S&C’s computer systems with those of the utility. The result has been a seamless flow of information between the two companies for four years in which S&C has provided more than 40,000 hours of design support.

S&C’s engineering services

A substation project task is initiated when the utility issues a document defining the project scope and desired package release date, along with relay and instrumentation single-line diagrams. The project scope covers details such as electrical equipment, foundations, and structures to be installed. The single-line diagrams indicate the desired microprocessor-based relay and auxiliary control device logic.

Upon receipt of this information, S&C engineers provide engineering services in the areas of protection and control design and physical design for transmission and distribution substations. S&C’s project engineers, electrical and structural designers, and CAD personnel work closely with the utility’s primary contact to issue complete electrical and structural design packages needed to construct the substation as designed.

For the electrical design package, S&C engineers utilize the utility’s design and CAD standards to develop elementary diagrams detailing the operation of the protection and control equipment. These elementary diagrams are then used to create panel layout and connection drawings, and apparatus drawings. S&C accesses the utility’s substation materials application program to produce the bills of material and cable pull lists, and updates the existing cable pull list, if applicable, to indicate the cables to be removed, those to be re-terminated, and those to be added. The electronic files are then transmitted to the utility’s administrative staff, who issues the drawings and specifications to their construction work force.

To create the structural design package, S&C engineers use the utility’s standard foundation, lattice and tubular structure, and grounding details to revise existing or create new foundation drawings, grounding plans, and structural details. S&C again accesses the utility’s substation materials application program to request the necessary material from the database of approved materials. The electronic files are again transmitted to the utility’s administrative staff, who issues the drawings to their construction work force.

Contact your local S&C Sales Representative for more information on S&C’s Engineering Services.