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Resilience and Reliability in Our Community

Powerside's PQube3 helped during a power event on a holiday

Lauren Walden, Powerside Marketing Coordinator: Memorial Day, May 27, 2024 was memorable for a few reasons — but in Gulfport, FL, it started as a quiet sunny morning in the town after a few days of rain. While out for a walk, and only a few blocks from home, the quiet was interrupted by a loud cracking sound nearby. Curious as to what had happened, further investigation revealed that a large tree had fallen in the yard of a nearby house and had come to rest on the power lines, blocking one of the local lanes. Local residents wasted no time in reporting the incident, and the local utility was there within the hour to secure the scene and isolate the power to the lines tangled in the tree.

Falling tree damaging power lines

Returning home, concerned about the power being out on a hot and humid day, it was a pleasant surprise to discover that the Power was still on.

Curious about the incident and the apparent resilience of the power system so close to home, we were excited to have had one of our Demo Power Quality analyzers connected in the area. Not only was the device running, but it was networked on our secure cloud based platform and recording the impact on the single phase mains near the outage.

Sure enough, and miles away, the email notification from the PQube came through indicating a Rapid Voltage Change and Voltage Swell incident had occurred.

A quick look at the email did show that, this time, the power quality alert was out of the ordinary. The demo unit had consistently picked up rapid voltage changes and voltage sags in the area, but this magnitude of swell was unusual. Curious about the alert, within minutes contact was made with the Powerside team in Gulfport to ask what seemed to be going on, and info was gathered for the use case.

One of the major benefits of our Qubescan analytics platform is that we can customize alerts to tune out regular deviations and characteristics to focus on just the events and trends that the user defines. As Powerside builds on our library of use cases, signature recognition can be increasingly automated — bringing accurate and actionable data to the user, wherever they are in the world. But let’s get back to the tree…

Fallen tree on collapsed power lines between two buildings.

Excited by the news of the tree (and that the power was still on!), a quick look on the user’s phone also revealed an interesting characteristic — literally seconds after the event.

Powerside's initial voltage swell grap and insight

The power indeed remained on, but after the initial voltage swell, there was a spike again three seconds later. Without being on site or in the utility, the spike looks like the impact of a recloser elsewhere on the local network. The U.S. grid is remarkable in its ability to recover, and many automatic reclosers exist on the network such that connection can be restored rapidly after a temporary event breaks the circuit. As a mere observer via our power quality device, we can’t tell you where in the circuit the recloser triggered, but we can tell you the magnitude of the impact a few blocks away.

Back on the ground: Another walk a few minutes later showed that the utility only needed to isolate one of the phases before getting to work with the chainsaw….

Power lines adjacent to the road
Power line next to a truck and workers

So, what can we deduce from this localized event?
The resiliency and reliability of our grid is impressive, but more exists below the surface. It’s not only about whether the lights are on or off. Remote detection of custom events using our Qubescan platform brings actionable data right into the hands of the user — whether local to the device or miles away — and within seconds of the event.

Power quality analyzers like the PQube 3 don’t miss a thing! The precision and speed of the device will detect the shortest of spikes and impacts in your power system. This can be important in determining causes of subsequent events: Did the fault cause subsequent damage nearby? How extreme was the surge/impact? The power quality device will tell you and protect your assets.

[Tom Richardson, Powerside VP Marketing]: Thank you, Lauren, for documenting the event… Always great to see pictures that cause these events! Glad you had a cool Memorial Day! (It was over 90º F in Gulfport!)


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