Plugged In

Georgia Power gets $50.5 million for smart grid

Georgia Power will receive $50.5 million of the $165 million Southern Company was awarded in federal stimulus funds.
 
The grant is part of President Obama's plan to invest $3.4 billion to spur transition to a smarter energy grid. Southern Company will match the funds at all of its operating companies.

Georgia Power plans to use the money to integrate smart grid technology into its transmission and distribution system to improve operating efficiency and reduce emissions.

"These funds will help speed up our smart grid initiatives," said Leslie Sibert, Transmission vice president, "and improve reliability on our network."

Georgia Power plans to install automated transmission and distribution line devices, which will enable system operators to isolate faulted lines remotely. Many of these devices will be placed in self-healing network schemes that will automatically isolate trouble areas and then restore power to customers on unaffected portions of the circuit, all without operator intervention.

The company also plans to upgrade the DSCADA system (Distribution Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), replace substation relay packages and install equipment monitors. These actions will allow operators to better locate the area of an outage before dispatching crews and enhance overall grid reliability.

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