AEP, Siemens to Develop Premium Power Park

American Electric Power (AEP, Columbus, OH) and Siemens Power Transmission & Distribution (Wendell, NC) have been awarded a contract by EPRI (Palo Alto, CA) to develop, implement and evaluate the country's first premium power park demonstration project. The purpose of the project will be to test whether new technologies are able to improve power quality at a reasonable cost for industrial park customers.During the two-year experiment, an existing industrial park in Delaware, Ohio, will be retrofitted and converted into a premium power park designed to supply customers with high-quality power. Customers in the Delaware Industrial Park represent a variety of loads and a broad spectrum of power quality needs. The research team will measure improvements in the park's power quality and reliability, as well as determine the customers' degree of satisfaction with the new system. The cost benefits of serving multiple customers' power quality needs will also be evaluated. AEP will provide utility system expertise, while Siemens will serve as the system integrator, performing investigation, coordination and analysis work. The project will be divided into three phases. In phase one, the team will monitor power quality during customers' activities; identify the range of power quality needs; identify the required power quality devices; develop an integration design scheme; and benchmark data. In phase two, the team will continue to benchmark power quality monitoring; conduct site preparation work; finalize design; and procure and install technology-enhanced equipment to improve power quality to the customer. In phase three, the team will continue to monitor and collect power quality data and perform an analysis of the "before" and "after" data to determine if there was marked improvement."What makes this project unique is that it's the first time that multiple power quality technologies, utilizing a communications network between the devices, will be integrated into one plan and system," stated AEP Project Co-manager Harry Vollkommer. "It also allows us to demonstrate that we can adapt existing systems with new technology."