Aging electric utility substations
Power quality monitoring hardware installation
PQube 3e, PQView
A leading utility serving over 4 million customers across Western Canada found itself in a bind: two aging power substations still played a crucial role in grid operations, but were well past their prime. Although full replacements would eventually take place, for now the utility needed the substations to stay online.
In the meantime, the utility desperately needed power quality visibility into the substations. Without it, the utility had no way to:
Upgrading the power substations was not in the budget. But shutting them down for rewiring and redesign wasn’t, either.
What they needed was a smart, plug-and-play solution—something that could deliver real-time power quality monitoring into these legacy sites without re-engineering the existing architecture.
That’s where Powerside stepped in.
Powerside recommended PQube® 3e, a compact, high-capacity power analyzer designed for multi-load monitoring.
Each PQube 3e is compact enough to simply plug into existing architecture, no rewiring or redesigns required. Plus, the meters support up to fourteen current channels (Fig. 1), allowing a single unit to monitor as many as four distribution substation feeders at once. The feeders—or the circuits carrying electricity from the substation out to the grid—are essential for reliable service delivery. Without monitoring at the feeder level, the utility would effectively be flying blind when trying to detect early signs of stress, overload or degradation.
Powerside deployed a fleet of the PQube 3e meters to track critical metrics like harmonics, voltage sags and transients at the very points where power enters the distribution network. At the same time, PQView®, Powerside’s device-agnostic, on-premise platform for collecting and analyzing power quality, would serve as the central hub for monitoring performance.
The meters were set up to:
Installation was tailored to each of the two substations:
In total, ten PQube 3e meters were installed across the sites, enabling monitoring of thirty-nine feeders. All without rewiring or extended outages.
With PQube 3e, and PQView, the utility now has high-resolution visibility into some of their most at-risk, yet still-critical infrastructure. What was once a monitoring blind spot is now a data-rich segment of the grid.
Instead of relying on reactive maintenance or manual inspections, the utility now leverages real-time, remote monitoring, automatic notifications and advanced diagnostics to:
Best of all, because each PQube 3e device monitors multiple feeders with built-in support for DNP3, the utility was able to plug into its existing systems with minimal configuration. Data is now centralized
through PQView analysis software, providing clear, at-a-glance views of their system health.
By retrofitting with PQube 3e, the utility has extended the lifespans of their aging power substations—all while moving closer to their long-term goals for grid modernization.
Modernize legacy assets without the risk of equipment downtime. Start a conversation with us about smart power monitoring solutions today.
