Working Partnership
Radius has been at the forefront of one of Scotland’s and Northern England’s most important utility schemes, the goal to reduce the impact of power outages to the high voltage electrical network.
Before utilising the Radius products, SPEN were reliant on customers calling their centres and informing the operator about the problem. They would then send teams of line engineers out into the field to search for the fault, based on the information from customers. This process was not only time consuming, considering the vast scale of the electrical network, but also very cost ineffective.

Post Fault Restoration
The utility turned to Radius, experts in data radio communication and distribution automation systems and smart networks. The goal was simple: a reliable and cost effective system to increase efficiency and quality of supply. The system should be able to monitor both the electrical network and handle any fault on the network automatically. The system should also be able to be controlled and monitored via the utility’s own SCADA system back at their control centres as well as at key locations and locally at each site.

Automation Expertise
The ongoing project is a highly collaborative one, with both companies bringing their expertise to the continual development of the scheme. One of the key staff on the development team for SPEN stated “Radius has been a key player in helping us provide a better service to our customers. Their in-depth knowledge has helped to significantly reduce the number of customers who have down time on our network”.

Simple Automation Deployment
The utilities network utilises a number of Radius products from CCU’s (Central Control Unit) in the primary substation (which provides the link to all the remote outstations, SCADA interfaces and logic routines) to the NMS 100 (switchgear motor control) which provides a very flexible interface to a range of remotely located switchgear. Radius even developed a specific SCADA protocol (DSP4 and Ferranti MkIIa) for the utility. This protocol is now part of an increasing protocol library which also includes DNP3 & IEC870.

For further information please click on the PDF below