CUC’s Newest Technology Building and Control Centre to Improve Customer Service and System Reliability

31 August 2020, 06:16 AM

Sci/Technology & Environment

Control Centre Operators at Caribbean Utilities Company, Ltd. (CUC) are now operating from a new technology building, which includes a new Control Centre.
The new Control Centre is the central point for supervision and control of CUC’s electricity generation, transmission and distribution systems. The building and systems have been upgraded following the original installation in 1999, and meets current industry standards with all of the features of modern control centres.
Work started on the project in September 2019 following the temporary relocation of control system equipment and operators to the Company’s Hurricane Centre, and was completed in August 2020.
Among the features of the new Control Centre are improvements in the working environment for the Control Centre Operators, situational awareness of the power system, communication with field crews, storm and outage management facilities, efficiency and renewable energy integration and management capabilities, with the capacity to expand over the next 10 years. With the new Control Centre housing state-of-the-art technology, CUC’s customers will benefit from the maintaining and improving of outage durations and enhanced communications through increased coordination and response of CUC’s field-based teams, particularly during outages.
The project came in on budget and just over a month over the timeline due to COVID-19 and the shelter-in place order. Manager, Engineering & Business Development, Ray Brown, whose department managed the project stated, “I am pleased with the work which was carried out on this project, from the design to the build-out of the new Control Centre. The transition was seamless and at no time did this project negatively impact the Company’s reliability. In spite of the challenging times, the project team worked very hard to ensure that the work was completed as close to the timeline as possible.”
Local contractors on the project were Jairam Construction Ltd. for civil works and Corporate Electric Ltd. who won the bid for electrical and other ancillary systems.