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Con Edison is testing the Cable Splicing Machine. Supply: ULC Applied sciences
Vitality and utility firms are turning to robots to enhance reliability, resilience, and employee security. ULC Applied sciences LLC and Con Edison Firm of New York Inc. immediately mentioned they’ve developed and field-tested a machine to automate the termination of medium-voltage cables.
The brand new prototype Cable Splicing Machine will permit utility staff to enhance the repeatability and consistency of vital connections inside the electrical grid, mentioned the companions. It might automate cable finish preparation whereas minimizing employee publicity to excessive voltages, added ULC.
“At Con Edison, employee security is paramount,” mentioned Patrick McHugh, senior vp for Con Edison Electrical Operations, in a launch. “The know-how used on this software will allow our staff to splice excessive voltage cables, effectively, uniformly, and, most significantly, extra safely.”
“While you scale back the chance of performing 1000’s of splices every year, enhance their accuracy and effectivity, it advantages staff, grid reliability, price effectiveness, and worth,” he mentioned. “That’s a win, win, win for Con Edison, its staff, clients, and the trade.”
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ULC designs Cable Splicing Machine to deal with complexity
ULC Applied sciences mentioned it has developed and commercialized robots, machine studying, and inspection companies to assist power and industrial firms restore and preserve their pipelines and important infrastructure. The Hauppauge, N.Y.-based unit of SPX Applied sciences Inc. claimed that its techniques might help clients reduce public disruption, scale back greenhouse gasoline emissions, enhance security, and reduce prices.
The brand new Cable Splicing Machine can performing advanced operations on feeder cables in underground vaults, defined ULC. It cited as major drivers the necessity to enhance the security of utility staff, shorten the general feeder outage length to cut back the stress on the grid, and enhance community resiliency.
“That is notably vital as underground distribution feeder outages happen throughout hostile climate circumstances resembling warmth waves and storms that place vital stress on the electrical grid,” ULC mentioned. The machine consists of a number of unbiased subsystems managed by a centralized processing laptop and consumer interface.
“The Cable Splicing Machine will be secured onto the center of an uncut cable within the subject and makes use of electrical actuators to supply exact coordinated movement alongside the axial and circumferential instructions, together with steady 360-degree operation,” mentioned Ali Asmari, director of infrastructure operations at ULC. “The machine’s software plate consists of quite a few instruments able to stripping again every layer of the cable to a desired dimension utilizing precision software depth controls.”
With the analysis and improvement part full, ULC is working with Con Edison to replace the tooling so it might probably deal with several types of cables quicker than earlier than. A number of auxiliary subsystems can autonomously perform further steps resembling adaptively shorting and chopping the cable, mentioned the corporate.
Dwell digital camera feeds permit an operator to observe and confirm your complete course of from outdoors the manhole with no bodily human intervention, ULC mentioned. The corporate gives its know-how by a robots-as-a-service (RaaS) mannequin.
The Cable Splicing Machine contains automated options for finishing advanced operations. Supply: ULC Applied sciences
Con Edison conducts subject trials
Con Edison Firm of New York is a subsidiary of Consolidated Edison Inc., one of many largest investor-owned energy-delivery firms within the U.S., reporting about $16 billion in annual revenues and $64 billion in belongings.
The regulated utility firm offers electrical service in New York Metropolis and New York’s Westchester County. It additionally offers gasoline service in Manhattan, the Bronx, and components of Queens and Westchester, in addition to and steam service in Manhattan.
Con Edison and ULC started subject trials of the Cable Splicing Machine this yr. The splicers lowered the machine into the construction after which inserted the cable contained in the machine. It accomplished three autonomous operations to organize the cable in roughly 25 to half-hour per every part of the medium-voltage cable.
ULC plans to show its know-how in Sales space 760 on the upcoming Distributech Convention, which shall be from Feb. 26 to March 1 on the Orange County Conference Middle in Orlando, Fla.