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Con Edison is testing the Cable Splicing Machine. Supply: ULC Applied sciences
Vitality and utility corporations are turning to robots to enhance reliability, resilience, and employee security. ULC Applied sciences LLC and Con Edison Firm of New York Inc. right this moment 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 enable utility employees to enhance the repeatability and consistency of vital connections inside the electrical grid, mentioned the companions. It might probably 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 expertise used on this device will allow our employees to splice excessive voltage cables, effectively, uniformly, and, most significantly, extra safely.”
“While you cut back the danger of performing hundreds of splices every year, enhance their accuracy and effectivity, it advantages employees, grid reliability, price effectiveness, and worth,” he mentioned. “That’s a win, win, win for Con Edison, its employees, clients, and the trade.”
Learn from Agility Robotics, Amazon, Disney, Teradyne and many more.
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 vitality and industrial corporations 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 decrease public disruption, cut back greenhouse fuel emissions, enhance security, and decrease prices.
The brand new Cable Splicing Machine can performing advanced operations on feeder cables in underground vaults, defined ULC. It cited as main drivers the necessity to enhance the protection of utility employees, shorten the general feeder outage period to cut back the stress on the grid, and enhance community resiliency.
“That is notably vital as underground distribution feeder outages happen throughout adversarial climate circumstances reminiscent of 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 means of a centralized processing laptop and consumer interface.
“The Cable Splicing Machine might be secured onto the center of an uncut cable within the discipline 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 device plate consists of quite a few instruments able to stripping again every layer of the cable to a desired dimension utilizing precision device depth controls.”
With the analysis and improvement part full, ULC is working with Con Edison to replace the tooling so it may handle several types of cables sooner than earlier than. A number of auxiliary subsystems can autonomously perform extra steps reminiscent of adaptively shorting and slicing the cable, mentioned the corporate.
Dwell digital camera feeds enable an operator to watch and confirm the whole course of from outdoors the manhole with no bodily human intervention, ULC mentioned. The corporate provides its expertise by means of a robots-as-a-service (RaaS) mannequin.
The Cable Splicing Machine consists of automated options for finishing advanced operations. Supply: ULC Applied sciences
Con Edison conducts discipline trials
Con Edison Firm of New York is a subsidiary of Consolidated Edison Inc., one of many largest investor-owned energy-delivery corporations within the U.S., reporting about $16 billion in annual revenues and $64 billion in property.
The regulated utility company gives electrical service in New York Metropolis and New York’s Westchester County. It additionally gives fuel service in Manhattan, the Bronx, and elements of Queens and Westchester, in addition to and steam service in Manhattan.
Con Edison and ULC started discipline 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 arrange the cable in roughly 25 to half-hour per every part of the medium-voltage cable.
ULC plans to display its expertise 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.
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