Chattanooga
Engineers Club Newsletter
http://www.chattanoogaengineersclub.org/
NEXT
MEETING ____________________
Monday
August 30 –
Matt McKee will host a tour of the Komatsu Plant on Signal Mountain Road.
Assemble at noon at plant entrance. Mark Wojnovich and Richard Manning
will represent the CEC officers. (Lunch arrangements are on your own.)
Komatsu
is a world leader in building Construction and Mining equipment. The
Chattanooga plant focuses on assembly of Hydraulic excavators and a line of
Forestry Machines. The Chattanooga Komatsu operation also builds frames
for the excavators, utilizing state of the art welding robots as well as CNC
machining centers. There are also computer controlled blasting machines
and modern paint shops.
Please wear
steel-toed boots if you have them. Leather boots are required in the
plant. Safety glasses are required, but will be provided as needed.
If you plan to attend, we request that you email Mark Wojnovich at mwojnovich@roe.com, so that he can
estimate the number of attendees. If you do not have access to email,
please call Mark at 423-475-8433. If he is not available, leave a voice
mail with your name, phone number, and number of people in your party
attending.
We
will be touring two buildings. The main building consists of the
manufacturing and assembly shops for excavators. The second smaller
building is located at the end of the facility where forestry equipment is
built. There are no stairs to climb, however the tour will take almost an
hour, including walking through a stockyard between buildings. Wheelchair
access is available.
FUTURE
MEETINGS ____________________
Monday September 6 – No Meeting in Observance of
Labor Day
Monday
September 13
–
Dale Bradshaw – Consultant to NRECA
“Algae
for CO2 Capture”
PREVIOUS
MEETING____________________
Monday
August 23 –
David Wade, Chief Operating Officer - Chattanooga Electric Power Board
“Chattanooga
EPB’s Fiber Optic Network for Smart Grid Deployment”
David
Wade acknowledged that the ‘smart grid’ has many interpretations,
but the EPB is trying to build a grid that is intelligent, self-healing, and
interactive. These functions require a robust communications
platform. By providing fiber to all customers, sufficient bandwidth
is assured to support these functions for many years ahead.
Currently
they have 4,000 miles of fiber installed. Fiber now reaches 70% of all
customers, and will reach all 168,000 customers by the end of 2010.
The
fiber network consists of a series of rings that encircle Chattanooga, with 13
communications hubs, each serving 15,000 to 25,000 customers. A single
strand of fiber runs from the communication hubs to each customer, although
that fiber may be spliced at several points, and may be bundled with other
fibers. Bundle sizes range from one fiber at the end user to 435 fibers
crossing the Tennessee River. Loops of fiber are included in overhead
runs to provide slack for reconfiguring a line or repairing it after a storm or
an accident, which might knock down a pole.
Self-healing
is provided by intelligent automated switches open when a fault is occurs, but
instead of reclosing automatically at full power, are able to test for
continuing faults at greatly reduced power, locate a fault and reconfigure the
network to isolate faults while minimizing customer impacts. It is
conservatively estimated that these intelligent switches can reduce outage time
and scope by 40%, compared to current methods. Outages are estimated to
cost EPB customers about $105 million per year. This reliability
advantage is the primary early benefit of the smart grid.
Later
advantages may be substantial as well. They include:
·
Facilitating load
control and demand response programs to reduce peak loads.
·
Encouraging
economic development by attracting customers who need high bandwidth
connections to the web.
·
Enhancing
Education by providing high bandwidth connections to schools and colleges.
·
Enhancing Energy
Efficiency programs by providing near real time feedback to customers on energy
usage.
·
Power quality
improvement by providing feedback to locate and eliminate problems
·
Detection of
Theft of Electric Service
·
Enabling
Prepay Options for Electric Service
·
Automated Meter
Reading. (This is often cited as a key motive for smart grid upgrades, but is
actually one of the least important benefits.)
Questions
from the audience mostly related to wiring in the home for phone internet and
TV services. Bandwidth is now 400 Megabit now, but this will increase to
two Gigabit in September. David explained that a box, typically on the
outer wall of a house, serves as the Optical Network Terminal (ONT). From
the ONT an Ethernet cable (Cat5) provides internet service, a coax cable
provides TV and an RJ 45 cable provides phone service. No modem is
required.
David
Wade has more than 27 years of experience in the electrical industry ranging
from hands-on construction to engineering. As EPB’s Executive Vice
President and Chief Operating Officer, David leads the company’s effort
to build one of the country’s most sophisticated smart electric
distribution systems.
CHATTANOOGA
ENGINEERS CLUB — CORPORATE SPONSORS_____________
We gratefully acknowledge the corporate sponsorships listed
below.
2010 — Robbins & Bohr, LLC
2009 — Coca—Cola
2008 — Alstom
2008 — Chattanooga State
QUESTIONS
and SUGGESTIONS______________
If
you have any questions, items that would be of interest to the Chattanooga
Engineers Club, or suggestions for future programs, please contact Ralph
Boroughs by e-mail at rdboroughs@gmail.com or by
phone at 423-227-0412. You can find membership application forms, references to
future programs, historical data, and other info at http://www.ChattanoogaEngineersClub.org.
To receive future meeting announcements by email, join the Chattanooga
Technology Organization mailing list at http://www.ChattanoogaEngineersClub.org/email.
Links
to local engineering societies are available to you at: http://www.chattanoogaengineersclub.org/engineer/
For
a calendar of local technology related events see: http://chatc.org/