RVC upgrades electrical grid

The Rockville Centre Electric Utility Department is planning some improvements — with some help from the federal government.

The department recently earned a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. The grant, of up to $600,000, will fund about half of the village’s plan to replace infrastructure and develop a cyber-security plan.

“There are extensive project reporting requirements with the Department of Energy,” Electric Superintendent Phil Andreas explained at an Oct. 1 briefing. “At the end of the day, one of the reasons that we got the grant is that we’d be willing to share … our lessons learned and the benefits, and a final report with the [American Public Power Association] … So we’re going to do that on a national basis.”

The total cost of the work will be $1.3 million. The amount over and above the grant will be funded by the village budget over the next two years, according to village spokeswoman Julie Scully.

The grant, from the Department of Energy’s Resilient Electricity Delivery Infrastructure Initiative, was awarded to the village in September and finalized this month. The village was one of four municipal or cooperative electric systems across the country to receive it.

Part of the budgeted work will entail the replacement of relays on substations 1, 2, 3 and 4, which provide power to the distribution circuits that in turn supply the village with electricity. “Substation 1 and 2 are about 40 years old, 3 and 4 are about 25 years old, so this will replace a lot of the electromechanical relays,” Andreas said. “Our goal is to extend the life of those assets.”

Most substation equipment is built to last beyond 40 years if it is maintained and undamaged.

The village’s Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system and remote terminal units, or RTUs, will be replaced and upgraded using grant money. This equipment monitors and controls the electrical system. The vendor that supplied the original system for the village does not sell the equipment anymore, but the vendor chosen for this project, Advanced Control Systems Inc., has developed units that fit into the existing systems without needing to rewire and replace the cabinets that store the RTU boards.

Navigant Consulting Inc. will develop a cyber-security plan for the electrical system, which is required by the Department of Energy. “By the nature of what they are and who they serve, public infrastructure and utility systems are targets for cyber-security,” Scully wrote in an email.

The work will take two years, though most of it will be done within 18 months. Village electric workers will wire the relays themselves, with support from CSA Engineering Services. The work will be done primarily at night and on weekends, when fewer people are using the system and parts of it can be temporarily taken out of service.