Sault Ste. Marie electricity provider shows how its Smart Grid is preventing power outages

Prior to SSG, if there was a fault on this circuit out of sub 10, obviously the breaker would open and there'd be a power outage to all of these customers on the entire circuit. Now since we've implemented smart grid technology on the distribution system, obviously now this recloser that is located right here can open, isolating the faulted area, and this recloser right here can tie these two circuits together, allowing this circuit to pick up these customers and restoring the power. So substation 11 off of Hare Avenue, very long run, lots of kilometers of line all the way out to Pointe Cheyenne. Prior to any fault being introduced, there's 819 total customers on that circuit. Let's introduce a fault. So we introduce a fault here. Our feeder breaker has to open because there's no smart grid technology at this point. And obviously is producing a power outage to the entire circuit, right? So now we have 819 total customers offline. let's introduce some smart grid technology so we know where the fault was the breaker opens we isolate the fault with this recloser and we back feed with this recloser picking up this entire pocket of customers now the outage is localized and only 306 customers are now affected like a recloser control unit and we'll see it later in the field it basically a small little mini breaker in the air but it also has an IED a control box very expensive these are very cost efficient to get the operators the information we need to expedite the outages so we were able to deploy these across like she mentioned the entire sub transmission system which as I explained our sub transmission system feeds our entire system so we are 100% covered with smart grid technology what we try to discuss with customers is it's that it's It's the balance of cost in comparison to the installation. So how much does a customer want to spend in order for us to reduce their power outages by one 10-minute outage a year, one one-hour outage a year, five outages a year? And we can do that math. We have all the stats and our reliability statistics and everything. So we put that in place. We also have customer surveys, and I believe customer surveys will be coming out shortly. So this is an opportunity for customers to identify. Do they want us to be investing into increased reliability? It doesn't come at a zero cost. So then when customers understand that, it gives us the opportunity to really understand where our customers want us to focus.