Duke Energy - 2012 Sustainability report
1-Innovative products & services - Power grid modernization under way
Duke Energy is well-positioned to bring the benefits of digital technology to our customers — as we modernize our electric power grid to improve system performance, efficiency and reliability.
Upgrading our power delivery network from analog to digital technology provides the capability for near-real-time communication across the system — even letting the system “talk to itself” through distribution automation.
‘Self-healing’ capability'
One important benefit of distribution automation is “self-healing” capability. Digital devices we’re installing on our lines and poles work together as a “team” to reduce and even prevent outages.
Without these technologies in place, when a tree or other object comes in contact with a power line, every customer served by that line — and other lines connected to it — loses power. With self-healing technology, computers automatically detect the problem, isolate it and reroute power — so fewer customers are left in the dark.
Most of the self-healing equipment we’ve installed to date has been in Ohio, where we’re implementing grid modernization on a large scale. The installation of 17 self-healing teams in Ohio has helped avoid over 1.1 million outage minutes for more than 20,000 customers. A total of nine self-healing teams have been installed in Indiana, Kentucky and North Carolina, with more planned over the coming years.
Digital meters
Another way customers benefit from grid modernization is through meter replacement. By year-end 2011, we had installed more than 325,000 digital electric meters, more than 228,000 digital gas meters and about 71,000 communication nodes in Ohio. The nodes serve as the “nerve center” of the digital grid by collecting and transmitting data systemwide.
Many of our meters in Ohio are located inside customers’ homes, making them difficult to read manually. With digital meters, we get the readings remotely. That has reduced the number of estimated bills we send to our Ohio customers by more than a third.
In addition, customers receive more information about their daily energy usage, enabling them to make wiser energy decisions and gain more control over their energy use and costs.
We’ve also installed nearly 14,500 digital meters in Charlotte, N.C., in an area where we are piloting a residential energy management program. We have another 2,350 digital meters in Greenville County, S.C., as part of a technology pilot conducted to test various manufacturers’ products for full-scale deployment.
Ten years ago, in North Carolina and South Carolina, we installed meters that enable drive-by reading — which improves billing accuracy and reduces operational costs. We are now evaluating technology that can provide those customers with information on their daily energy usage as well.
Duke Energy’s long-term plan for all of our service areas is to continue to upgrade the power grid, with regulatory approval, in order to provide the most reliable and efficient service possible to our customers.