SAME Young Professionals Webinar: The Resilient Substation—Using Gas-Insulated Substations

For over 70 years, substations have been designed as large, outdoor, air-cooled facilities which are vulnerable to failure. Substations are the line of demarcation between the utility feed and government facility’s infrastructure, making them uniquely vulnerable to both human and natural threats. The resiliency of this key component can be the difference between being able to operate the critical facility or the facility going dark. With today’s terrorist threats to infrastructure as well as the potential for severe weather events, the resiliency of substations needs to be improved or hardened. A solution to this problem can be found in Gas-Insulated Substations (GIS), which are approximately 15 times the reliability of air-insulated substations. The technology exists today to reduce the footprint of substations and enclose them in small, climate-controlled buildings that can shield them from storm events and allow them to be elevated above the storm surge. The purpose of this presentation is to introduce the concept of GIS and demonstrate how utilizing this design improves the resiliency of the electrical infrastructure of commercial and government facilities. The advantages of GIS will be explained as well as the cost difference between employing this technology and the standard open-air substation design.

SCROLL DOWN TO DOCUMENTS FOR A FILLABLE PDH CERTIFICATE AND PRESENTATION HANDOUT.