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Con Edison is testing the Cable Splicing Machine. Supply: ULC Applied sciences

Power 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. at this time 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 important connections throughout 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 expertise used on this instrument will allow our employees to splice excessive voltage cables, effectively, uniformly, and, most significantly, extra safely.”

“While you cut back the chance of performing hundreds of splices annually, enhance their accuracy and effectivity, it advantages employees, grid reliability, value effectiveness, and worth,” he mentioned. “That’s a win, win, win for Con Edison, its employees, 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 providers to assist vitality and industrial firms restore and keep their pipelines and significant infrastructure. The Hauppauge, N.Y.-based unit of SPX Applied sciences Inc. claimed that its techniques will help clients reduce public disruption, cut back greenhouse gasoline emissions, enhance security, and reduce prices.

The brand new Cable Splicing Machine can performing complicated operations on feeder cables in underground vaults, defined ULC. It cited as major drivers the necessity to enhance the security of utility employees, shorten the general feeder outage length to cut back the stress on the grid, and enhance community resiliency.

“That is significantly essential as underground distribution feeder outages happen throughout hostile climate situations akin to warmth waves and storms that place important stress on the electrical grid,” ULC mentioned. The machine consists of a number of unbiased subsystems managed via a centralized processing laptop and person 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 offer 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 instrument plate consists of quite a few instruments able to stripping again every layer of the cable to a desired dimension utilizing precision instrument depth controls.”

With the analysis and growth part full, ULC is working with Con Edison to replace the tooling so it could possibly deal with various kinds of cables quicker than earlier than. A number of auxiliary subsystems can autonomously perform further steps akin to adaptively shorting and slicing the cable, mentioned the corporate.

Stay digital camera feeds enable an operator to observe and confirm your entire course of from exterior the manhole with no bodily human intervention, ULC mentioned. The corporate affords its expertise via a robots-as-a-service (RaaS) mannequin.

The Cable Splicing Machine consists of automated options for finishing complicated 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 firms within the U.S., reporting about $16 billion in annual revenues and $64 billion in belongings.

The regulated utility firm supplies electrical service in New York Metropolis and New York’s Westchester County. It additionally supplies gasoline 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 exhibit its expertise in Sales space 760 on the upcoming Distributech Convention, which can be from Feb. 26 to March 1 on the Orange County Conference Middle in Orlando, Fla.