NRECA is the national service organization for more than 900 not-for-profit rural electric cooperatives and public power districts. It provides retail electric service to more than 42 million consumers in 47 states and retail sales account for approximately 12 percent of total electricity sales in the United States. TechAdvantage – a flagship event organized annually by NRECA – demonstrates new ways to optimize utilities’ technology systems with cutting-edge solutions. Unlike other “best practices in technology” conferences, TechAdvantage speaks directly to electric co-op professionals and provides focused solutions.
At TechAdvantage 2016 held in New Orleans in mid-February, SMART from MinMax Technologies was prominently featured in one of its breakout sessions labeled “Confronting the Age of an Aging Utility Infrastructure” as a possible tool for asset management, inspections and asset life extension. The session which was conducted in a room full of utility executives started with an overview of aging Infrastructure and the state of asset maintenance presented by Power System Engineering. It was followed with the practice of equipment maintenance by Northern Neck Electric Coop (NNEC) of Virginia. As an experienced SMART user, Patrick Henry, VP of Engineering from NNEC, praised SMART for providing significant improvement over their home grown system. He specifically mentioned the following SMART features that have improved the efficiency and the accuracy of their inspection operation:
• Works with any device
• Able to do offline inspections and sync to cloud database
• Work orders developed for work needed
• Accountability trail to inspectors
• On track to inspect entire system in a year
See the complete presentation especially slides 49-60 by clicking on the following link:
2016-TechAdvantage-NewOrleans-AssetAging-20160216