Maximizing Grid Performance with LineVision

 

Join us for an insightful discussion with Tica Taveras, Senior Director of Engineering at LineVision, as we explore innovative solutions to maximize grid performance. Discover how LineVision partners with utilities worldwide to address critical grid issues, from load growth and extreme weather to affordability. Learn about dynamic line ratings, non-contact sensors, and the path to a net zero grid.

Listen to the Episode

 

Watch the Episode:

Highlights:

• The Most Significant Issues Our Grid is Facing
• The Difference Between Customer & Economic Impact
• Software & Hardware Integration
• Deployment of Dynamic Line Reading
• DLR Vs. Other Methods

Links

Find out more about LineVision here

Connect with Tica on LinkedIn here

Transcript:

James: Hi everyone, this is James from the CTRL+Listen podcast brought to you by Octopart. Today we have a guest for you, Tica Taveras, she's the Senior Director of Engineering at LineVision. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate you taking the time.

Tica: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to being here.

James: Thank you. Anytime. Just for anyone who isn't familiar with the company or yourself, do you wanna just tell people a little bit about your role and what the company's about?

Tica: Yeah, yeah. So I work for LineVision who is a company that partners with utilities around the world to address critical grid issues. So we enable grid operators to modernize operations and maximize grid performance. So at LineVision, I am the Senior Director of Engineering, which means I lead the engineering operations. So we have both a hardware and a software team and I'm responsible for leading those teams.

Joseph: What was your background before Line Vision?

Tica: Yeah, so I'm an electrical engineer by training. I have a master's in signal processing and before I started my career actually in the hardware, doing hardware in the test and measurement space, working for a company called National Instruments. And I was doing hardware for about 10 years before I transitioned and started doing software development as an individual contributor. And then I made my way back to leadership and I worked for Pluralsight for a couple of years as a Director of Hands-on Experiences. And then most recently joined LineVision as the Senior Director of Engineering within the organization there.

James: Do you wanna just go into a little bit more about what LineVision is and what they do?

Tica: Yeah, absolutely. So at Line Vision, I mentioned we partner with utilities around the world. And what we do is we equip those partners with advanced analytics and sensors that improve the capacity and the resilience and the safety of the grid. So at the end of the day, our approach is we have a grid system that is not scaling fast enough for the demand that we have. And so at Line Vision, we are helping utilities optimize the grid by delivering safe and reliable operations.

Joseph: What are the most significant issues the grid is facing apart from demand?

Tica: So a couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to attend the IEE Transmission and Distribution Conference in California, and it was interesting to hear some of the experts in the space talk. So they mentioned there were three main issues that the grid is facing right now. One of them being load growth, the other one being extreme weather. And the third one is affordability. So talking about those in a little bit more detail, right? Load growth, you can imagine there's a lot of houses that are getting solar panels. There's a lot of wind, wind industries, and there's a lot of data centers and AI literally like mass electrification, right? And so all this load is overloading our grid system. And so that's one of the main challenges. Talking about extreme weather, we have climate change that is impacting our day-to-day lives, right? We have extreme weathers. California was flooded recently. There's extreme weather around the world, and that's one of the challenges that impacts the safety of the grid and the reliability of it. And finally is affordability. So this is a supply and demand issue. So, you know, as more demand for electricity, the prices hike up and customers are struggling to keep up with the bills, with inflation and everything. And so at the end of the day, the main issues are load growth, extreme weather, and affordability.

Joseph: You mentioned there's a difference between how these issues affect customers and the economy. They're sort of affecting individuals, but they're also affecting society as a whole. There's a lot of interplay I'd imagine between those two.

Tica: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Right. So as a utility, if the customers are not paying their bills, they can't afford to continue to expand on the transmission system. But at the end of the day, right, I think we're all struggling with where things are in terms of inflation and just the economy in general.

James: On a slightly different point, what does Net Zero mean in terms of grid systems and your industry?

Tica: Yeah, absolutely. So LineVision's mission is to accelerate the net zero grid. And what we mean by that is that the net zero grid is intended to not release additional emissions when generating and supplying electricity. So that's the idea behind it, is balancing the greenhouse gas emissions produced and removed from the atmosphere.

Joseph: Another question I had was, what is a non-contact sensor and why is it so effective?

Tika: So this is actually one of Line Vision's differentiators. So by non-contact sensors, Line Vision has a patent where part of our solution to our customers is we deploy these sensors on some of our transmission line towers. And it is a non-contact sensor. The cool thing about it is that it means that during installation you don't need to go through an outage to be able to install and start monitoring those transmission lines. So it's basically a plug and play, right? With some hand tools, our team goes to the field and deploys our sensors in those transmission towers.

Joseph: And how does this technology help utilities? How does it help you?

Tika: This technology helps utilities because as I mentioned, there are those three main challenges that utilities have. And one of those biggest challenges, like I mentioned, was load growth. The reality is that it isn't a one size fits all. The utilities will have to build new infrastructure to support the growth that's needed, but at the end of the day, this is an option to optimize the existing infrastructure and to get the most out of it. So what we're doing is utility companies traditionally have used what's called static line ratings. And what this means is this is an IEEE 738 standard, and it's a method for calculating ratings for transmission lines. So with our sensors, Line Vision monitors the conductor temperature that's localized to that specific transmission line, and therefore can unlock a lot more capacity within that transmission line up to about 40% in some cases.

Joseph: Okay, so it's about optimizing a system already in place.

Tica: Exactly, yeah. It's optimizing a system in place and going back to the net zero grid is optimizing it with the intent to incorporate more renewable energy, if that makes sense.

Joseph: Great. And the data that's gathered, can this be used to improve efficiency and performance throughout the grid?

Tica: Yeah, absolutely. So this is information that helps our operators or the utility operators when they're determining how much power to send through a specific line. So this is all about getting real-time data about those lines to know exactly how much capacity is in those lines that we can send extra power to. So we just operationalized National Grid New York, and this is an example, like this is a monumental step in the right direction because National Grid New York is now using the numbers, the dynamic line ratings in operations. And what that means is the operators can now see how much extra capacity is available as opposed to using the static line ratings that they used to use before.

Joseph: I know that you have both a software and a hardware side. How does that sort of integrate to create one product that operates effectively?

Tica: The special thing about Line Vision is that not only do we install these localized sensors on transmission towers in the field, but we also do a lot of in-depth analytics with our data. And so after that processing, we use this information to calculate the dynamic line ratings. So what I mean by that is the way we calculate conductor temperature that's localized is we measure the SAG and the blowout of the line. So taking a step back, think about a conductor line, there are environmental aspects that are impacting that line, and more importantly, the wind that goes through that line truly cools the transmission line to allow for extra capacity. And so what we're doing when we're localized is we're measuring how much SAG is on that conductor as well as the blowout on that line. And from there we determine the conductor temperature. And so that's what we use to calculate the dynamic line ratings.

James: I know that as we are rolling into space with more green energy and the grid's gonna have to manage that. How important do you think the role of batteries and energy storage is gonna be going forward?

Tica: One of the big challenges that we have is with substations or being able to distribute a lot of these renewable energies that we have. And so I think this is an opportunity for us to start incorporating that a little bit better. Did that answer your question?

James: I think so. It's the whole system that needs to change. Basically, it's what I've been hearing from multiple guests we've had on the show. It's not one component that's causing a problem. It's a holistic improvement we need.

Tica: Absolutely. And like I mentioned before, we are gonna have to build new infrastructure. We can't get around that, but the reality is that it takes time, right? And it takes a lot of money as well and resources. And so optimizing the existing grid to make sure that we can get the most out of it is one step in the right direction.

James: Yeah, I think with the net zero targets, it's a really ambitious goal, but I think people aren't seeing that we are gonna have to build a whole new system and in the meantime make the one we have as efficient as possible while we upgrade to what we need. It's not just a, we're just gonna stop using fossil fuels and everything's gonna be great type situation.

Tica: Yes, exactly.

James: Why do you think dynamic line rating hasn't been more widely deployed already?

Tica: Dynamic line ratings has been around for about 10 years. So in, I know utilities is not necessarily part of the government, but in government terms there is a lot of relationship there. They're slow adopters, right? And so the utilities' main concern is the safety and the reliability of the grid. And so we have some customers that even though they have our sensors, they're not operationalized and so they're being conservative in operationalizing or basically using our information in operations. That's why this National Grid deployment is such a big step in that direction. It's trendsetting, right? It's paving the path for proving that in operations we can be successful at being more aggressive while still being safe in maximizing or optimizing our grid.

James: How should utilities decide whether they want to use DLR or another method to address their issues?

Tica: Yeah, you know, like we were talking earlier, I don't think it's a one size fits all. I think DLR is one aspect of improvements they can do to the grid, but the government is currently focusing a lot on grid enhancing technologies, so DLR is one of those grid enhancing technologies, but there's a lot of other options out there.

James: What's coming up for LineVision? What are you excited about in the near future?

Tica: Yeah, so in the near future, I'm looking forward to more utilities being operationalized. I think it's such a big step in using dynamic line ratings in operations that I'm looking forward to deploying more lines as well as getting more utilities on board across the world. Line Vision has customers outside of the US as well. And this is a problem that's important across the world.

James: Do you see an expansion into Europe, Australia, a bunch of other regions as you continue to grow?

Tica: Our sales team is looking into expanding into different areas as well. Latin America, Australia, Europe. Like that's what we're looking for.

James: That's exciting. Everyone has the same issues. So there's space for you.

Tica: Exactly.

Joseph: You mentioned earlier about solar and wind power potentially leading to overloading of grids. What other ways will renewable energies affect grids?

Tica: Yeah, you know, I'm not an expert necessarily in that area, but I can see renewable energy affecting it in ways. Like for example, I think sometimes we are so set in our ways that it's difficult to start incorporating different methodologies, right? Or start incorporating new technology. So that's kind of the idea behind DLR is modernizing the grid. I see renewable energy as a modernization of the grid and the power that's available. But I think one of the challenges is just taking that step, right? The infrastructure wasn't built necessarily for renewable energies and I think it's one of the challenges that we're gonna face as we continue to incorporate more. There's gonna be issues that we didn't foresee that are going to impact that.

James: Yeah, I think we've seen some of those happen already in some places like South Australia. I remember a few years ago they had a total grid blackout 'cause they switched primarily to wind and solar power and that grid just wasn't stable enough already for it.

Tica: Yeah, yeah. The stability of it is an important issue for sure.

James: Was there anything that's exciting you in the energy space that doesn't have to be a trend? Just anything that you've, even within your own company, that you found interesting or exciting?

Tica: Yeah, absolutely. So I mentioned earlier I'm fairly new to the green space. I've been with Line Vision for about a year and a half. And being new to this industry is amazing. The passion that our society has towards making a better world. And so that's the thing that excites me. And I know my team is extremely passionate about the work that we're doing and helping to accelerate the net zero grid. So to me that's what gets me excited in the mornings.

James: That's awesome. I have one final question for you that just popped into my head. What would you say is the misconception that people tend to have about the grid?

Tica: Yeah, I think oftentimes we take for granted how much effort it takes to build new infrastructure, right? It has such a big impact on our environment, but also it's such a big cost and there's such a big expense. And so I think oftentimes we think, oh, well we can just build more of it. But we run into so many challenges by thinking that way, that I think this is why grid enhancing technologies are so important to our future is because we cannot scale fast enough and this is one way to optimize what we currently have.

James: Do you think part of that comes down to people sort of taking it for granted 'cause they've just always had it, it's just a given that they're gonna have electricity?

Tica: Yeah, absolutely. Right. You just call your power company and you have power readily available for you. I'm originally from the Dominican Republic and when I grew up we had power outs all the time. And so power has been a challenge that I grew up with and seeing some of that and being now in the US and seeing some of these challenges as we scale the infrastructure and our population continues to grow. I think it's one of the things that it's gonna continue to impact us and we need to think outside the box on how to address that issue.

James: Definitely. I think LA is at a point now where it's getting so big that it's starting to face some of those grid challenges, especially in the summer when everyone's air conditioning.

Tica: Yes, yes, exactly. So yeah, I live in Utah and we have power outages every summer because the temperature gets extremely hot and it's one of the challenges that we see every day. Even, you know, in a country like the United States, it's a challenge.

James: Right? I'm originally from South Africa and I haven't been there in a bit, but I have a lot of family still living there and they actually have blackouts where certain times of the day they'll be told their energy will be off for this long. It will just kind of take turns on the grid. So, I mean, hopefully it never gets to that in the US but something to keep in mind.

Tica: Yes, absolutely.

James: So that kind of brings us to the end of our questions, but I have one more for you. If people want to check out the website technology that you guys are putting out there, your work, what's the best place to do that?

Tica: You can find us on LinkedIn and Twitter. I think those are the main places where you can find Line Vision. And then I actually recommend you check out the press conference with National Grid New York about operationalizing some of those lines. I get really excited every time I see that.

James: And that's available on your website?

Tica: Yes, it is available on our website as well.

James: Okay, great. Well thank you so much for coming on. It's been absolutely fascinating talking to you. I know I've learned a lot about the grid and electricity.

Tica: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.

James: Anytime. And for anyone listening at home, come back next week, we'll have another guest for you and we will include links to the website and socials of Line Vision in the description of the video.