Overcoming Cultural Challenges to Distribution Automation

摘要

Adding distribution automation for the first time to a utility's distribution system may seem like a daunting technical task; and it is. However, the larger piece of installing a system involves cultural change in a utility's workforce. This presentation will review a distribution automation project at a rural utility in northern Wisconsin. The speaker, who was the project manager, found that retraining personnel and building a different culture was more important and in some ways more challenging than getting a SCADA-controlled recloser to automatically restore customers during an outage in less than three minutes. This presentation will review some frustrations, lessons learned and techniques that were used to implement a paradigm shift in the operation of a distribution system. Examples of vastly different changes include union jurisdiction issues, jurisdictional zones, task responsibilities of field personnel, and streamlining programming, testing, installation and commissioning of the new system. Another major change was to adjust the nature of emergency response to take advantage of the new technology. Also, implementation of the new technology usually requires a process of trial and error. Management must instill confidence in the new system through education until it is operating as designed.