PowerSecure Leverages GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms for Utilities

GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms announced that PowerSecure International, Inc. has selected the company’s industry-leading PLC families to be a part of its solution to meet utilities’ stringent requirements for the protection and control of distributed generation systems.

Mission-critical facilities such as hospitals, waste water plants, data centers, process-intensive, high-value manufacturing, large commercial buildings, government installations and other CI&I Utility loads typically require full-rated or near full-rated emergency power systems for life safety or economic loss prevention. These systems often involve redundant generators, buses and feeders for loads—providing power to the facility to maintain operations in the event of a utility outage. Meeting emergency power requirements is a large expense, for which power is used only during utility outages. The majority of these power systems that have been or are being installed use transfer switches to separate loads from the utility during an outage, and connect the emergency generation. The transfer switches are not designed to facilitate parallel operation of the utility and emergency generation plant, nor are the controls and protection schemes. Parallel operation of an onsite facility owned generation and the utility grid could offer operational and economic benefit to both the facility and the utility.

PowerSecure sought to provide a solution that would meet utilities’ stringent requirements for the protection and control of such DG systems. “We selected GE Fanuc’s PLCs as they are easily able to customize the I/O and programming to meet the scalable needs of a particular installation’s electrical topology,” said Brian Kisner, President, NexGear Business Unit, a division of PowerSecure International, Inc. “It is also extremely survivable, and that was a key attribute when PowerSecure selected the GE Fanuc line.”