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Formed in 1965, ElectriCities is a non-profit
government service organization representing 98 cities, towns and universities
that own electric distribution systems in North Carolina, South Carolina
and Virginia. ElectriCities provides customer service and safety
training, emergency and technical assistance, communications, government
affairs and legal services for its members. Through consolidation of these
services, members save their customers the expense of administering these
functions locally. ElectriCities also provides management services
to North Carolina’s two municipal Power Agencies: North Carolina Municipal
Power Agency Number 1 (NCMPA1) and North Carolina Eastern Municipal Power
Agency (NCEMPA).
During the energy crisis of the mid-70s,
the North Carolina Legislature enacted legislation to enable cities to
join together to form Municipal Power Agencies, paving the way for cities
to enter the generation business. Fifty-one cities in North Carolina chose
to form two Municipal Power Agencies and issued $5.6 billion of electric
revenue bonds. Combined, the Power Agencies own portions of five
nuclear and two coal-fired plants totaling more than 1450 MW of generation
capacity. The Business Need
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In preparation for deregulation, NCMPA1
was granted the ability to buy and sell electricity on the open market.
The potential benefits, both from additional revenue and cost savings,
were in the millions of dollars. To be able to engage in these market
transactions, however, NCMPA1 required real-time monitoring of electrical
consumption at all of the substations in its member cities and towns. |
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To further reduce costs, NCMPA1 installed
generators at 10 electrical substations to be used during periods of peak
electrical demand. Here again the potential savings were in the
of millions of dollars. These generators required a robust monitoring
and control system. |
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ElectriCities’ headquarters required a new
telephone system and desired to reduce their costs for local and long-distance
telephone service. |
The Global Solution
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Designed and engineered a robust Frame Relay
network for measuring electrical usage by polling Remote Terminal Units (RTU’s) at 45 electrical substations. |
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Engineered the network and its attached
equipment to meet the special safety and reliability requirements that
are encountered at electrical substations. |
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Managed the project to actually install
and implement the Frame Relay network, working with the State of North
Carolina and multiple local telephone companies. |
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Assisted NCMPA1 with the preparation of
the Request For Proposal (RFP) for the distributed generation system. |
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Created the functional requirements for
network control of the generators and the pro forma network design that
were included in the RFP. This network design included connectivity
to dual masterstations at separate locations for redundancy. |
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Consulted with NCMPA1 on the detailed design
of the network interface at the generator locations. |
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Prepared Requests for Proposals (RFP’s)
for a new headquarters telephone system and for local and long-distance
telephone service. |
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Reviewed the responses to the RFP’s and
made specific recommendations to ElectriCities’ management. |
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Managed the project to install the new telephone
system and to convert to the new carriers. |
Visit ElectriCities web site at: www.electricities.com
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