Stations Equipment

Overview

The Stations Equipment Interest Group brings together utilities to share expertise, best practices, and emerging technologies related to station equipment and infrastructure.

Through collaborative research and knowledge sharing, the group helps utilities optimize equipment lifecycle management, reduce costs, improve reliability, and support the planning and development of future stations.

Focus areas

Innovation and Design
Inspection and Maintenance Practices
Condition Monitoring and Assessment
Risk Management and Safety

This group is for

Station engineers, engineering managers and directors, and electrical engineers

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Technical Advisor Support

Brian Sparling

Stations Equipment

Brian Sparling, LSMIEEE, is a transformer specialist with over 30 years of experience in the electric utility industry, focused on monitoring, diagnostics, and condition assessment of power transformers. He has held technical, sales, and product leadership roles supporting utilities and industrial clients globally. Brian has extensive expertise in dissolved gas analysis, online monitoring systems, and transformer health assessment. Most recently, he served as Senior Transformer Technical Advisor at Kinectrics, providing technical leadership, client support, and mentoring. He is an active contributor to CIGRE and IEEE working groups and has authored over 30 technical papers on transformer monitoring and diagnostics.

Top Resources

RESEARCH REPORT

Mitigating Animal-Caused Outages in Existing and New Substations

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Animal-caused substation outages negatively affect reliability, resulting in financial, social-political, and/or biological implications to utilities and customers. To better understand this issue, the authors conducted a literature review on animal-caused outages. They also surveyed CEATI members on their experiences with various mitigation strategies. Findings were compiled into this report, which CEATI members can use to guide decision-making when choosing how to mitigate animal-caused outages.

RESEARCH REPORT

Station Battery System Maintenance and Condition Monitoring

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By means of an extensive literature review and survey of utilities, this report studies the available battery technologies proven for stationary substation applications, as well as best practices for battery system design, procurement, installation, commissioning, monitoring, and maintenance.

ASSESSMENT TOOL

Health and Risk Index Tool for Circuit Breakers

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This report describes the health degradation modes of different categories of circuit breakers employed on transmission and distribution systems, reviews the best industry practices for inspection and testing of circuit breakers, and provides a methodology and software tool for determining the health and condition of circuit breakers. Guidelines are also provided for the use of the condition assessment tool and interpretation of the results.

GUIDANCE DOCUMENT

Technical Specifications for a More Robust Power Transformer

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CEATI initiated this project to formulate specification guidelines for more resilient and robust power transformers. These guidelines can enable utilities to strike the right balance between grid reliability and cost optimization. The report includes findings from a survey of 15 power utilities, guidance with respect to the transformer design review, and the development of an optimal framework for power transformer specifications. The framework considers transformer design and development, material choice and composition, operating conditions, technical specifications, transportation requirements, quality control, and acceptance testing.

RESEARCH REPORT

Innovation and Development of Substations

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The electric utility industry is in the process of intensive integration of intelligent electronic devices in high-voltage substations throughout the network. Many utilities have made significant progress in the evolution of the digital substation over the past several years, with the implementation of several innovative technologies. This report provides information on approaches to the implementation of substation digitalization technology being taken by advanced utilities and documents the benefits, pitfalls, and lessons learned when adopting new innovations in substations.