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Thomas Beckwith, CEO Years ago, Beckwith Electric anticipated that the future of the electric power industry was going to be heavily impacted by high penetration of solar and wind generation (DER) in the distribution system, added to distribution automation (DA) reconfiguration. This could severely disrupt the ability of electric power companies to maintain control of the voltage and VAr profile unless the control devices learn how to correctly respond to the effects of this generation. Large automation systems are part of the answer, but consume significant communication bandwidth for data collection and provide control automation system commands with unacceptable latency to cope with, with high DERpenetration and DA reconfiguration. As a manufacturer of microprocessor protection and control devices since the early 1980s, Beckwith Electric focused on a “central command with smart boots on the ground” strategy. By the 2000s, its controls for LTC transformers, voltage regulators, and capacitor banks already exhibited a high degree of Smart Grid operation. But the company realized that it needed a quantum leap in control intelligence, resident in the controls themselves, to autonomously respond to a number of conditions that they would experience in the grid of the future, without intervention from “central command,” and even without communication.
On the other hand, Beckwith Electric realized that the controls could only measure the conditions at their specific location, and would thus need powerful ethernet communications to communicate with the multiple branches of a power company at the same time, and even with different protocols. Communications would be used to receive new “marching orders” from “central command” to respond to grid changes beyond their area of measurement, detect and report to operations and maintenance(O&M) failures within the devices they were controlling, and locate power quality problems with harmonics to the 63rd, all without rolling the trucks.
Confronted with this large task Beckwith Electric decided to initiate concurrent design, a concept Thomas Beckwith—the CEO of Beckwith Electric—had studied at the University of South Florida business school. He established Beckwith Electric’s Design Review Board (DRB), drafting rules of engagement, and nominating members from engineering, sales, marketing, and tech solutions. The company would meet tri-annually for a solid week, bringing in requests and ideas from its customers to create the detailed design features required, subject to the extensive use cases that would confront the designs in the field. Beckwith Electric would agonize over the way they would look on the computer screen for the relay or control and the nomenclature that would appear, with the purpose of creating a very easy user interface despite the sophistication of the task. The company calls it ‘Elegant Simplicity’ as, over the years, the industry has concluded that “complexification” leads to errors.
This design process has four stages: 1. new idea, 2. need of more customer definition, 3. design requirements submitted to engineering, and 4. finished design released to manufacturing. Beckwith Electric’s experience demonstrates this is the most efficient way to rapidly create and introduce new designs, and get it right the first time without redos.
Challenge Given, Problem Solved
Beckwith Electric’s efficient and accelerated design strategy has created novel solutions for a number of the problems being discussed at the highest levels in the electric power industry. These problems stem from the flexibility of Distribution Automation (DA) that reconfigures the grid for fault location, interruption, and system restoration or for optimal load flow, resulting in different line lengths, loads, and device locations.
Added to this, the high penetration of distributed solar and wind (DER), and utility companies have the perfect storm.
As a manufacturer of microprocessor protection and control devices since the early 1980s, Beckwith Electric focused on a “central command with smart boots on the ground” strategy
The electric power industry is beginning to experience costly high operations counts of tapchangers on transformers and voltage regulators for multiple reasons:
• With solar and wind facilities, output power and voltage falls and rises rapidly with cloud and wind fluctuations. Solution: Inverse Time Response
• Voltage Regulator operations clash with Capacitor Bank operations to control voltage. Solution: VAr Bias the tapchanger control
• Now that solar and wind facilities are encouraged to export and import VArs, this will exacerbate the problem. Solution: VAr Bias the tapchanger control
• Faced with reverse power, making the wrong decision to reverse regulate or not, increases operations and could cause extreme voltages. Solution: Auto determination (strong source vs. weak source)
"Beckwith Electric’s efficient and accelerated design strategy has created novel solutions for a number of the problems being discussed at the highest levels in the electric power industry"
• Tapchanger Line Drop Compensation incorrectly operates for every variation of DER-supplied load downstream, and significant low voltage can occur down the line. Solution: Remote Voltage Bias keeps a “weather eye” on that remote voltage to ensure it does not go below the set limit.
VAr Bias: The right tool for the right job: Let the Tapchanger Control Voltage for Real Power fluctuations and substation transformer high side voltage fluctuations. Let the Capacitor (and Smart Inverter) Control VArs for Reactive Power fluctuations.
A number of other mission-critical solutions have caught the attention of top electric power system managers:
• Cybersecurity provided by separate devices can be unplugged and bypassed at unmanned locations. Solution: Fully Embedded Cyber Security - IEEE 1686 and NERC CIP V5. cannot be bypassed.
• Determining the location of equipment failure requires significant rolling of the trucks to detect, locate, and analyze. Solution: Asset failure analysis on every transformer, regulator, and capacitor control identifies failed components
• Determining the location of the source of power quality problems requires significant rolling of the trucks to detect, locate, and analyze. Solution: Power Quality Metering on every regulator, capacitor, and recloser control and all feeder and DG Interconnect relays, recording harmonics to the 31st or 63rd with calculated THD and TDD to send alarms and/or autonomously trip.
• At solar and wind facilities, high harmonics arise at low power output and are capable of damaging transformers, motors, capacitors, PLCs, and ASDs. Solution: power quality metering on every regulator, capacitor, and recloser control and all feeder and DG Interconnect relays, recording harmonics to the 31st or 63rd with calculated THD and TDD to send alarms and/or autonomously trip the facility.
• High solar and wind penetration raises line voltage and reduces possible additional hosting. Solution: Line Rise Compensation
• DA Reconfiguration requires different settings for changing lines, loads, locations. Solution: Central Command DMS sends a command to select new settings groups to all protection and control devices for new topology
• Faced with DA Reconfiguration or DER reverse power, Capacitor Bank Settings must change as the source impedance changes and the load and source positions are reversed. Solution: The Autodaptive® capacitor control technique eliminates the complex setting calculations, and the controller adaptively calculates its own settings irrespective of load growth, reconductoring, and feeder reconfiguration.
• Expensive DMS consumes significant communication bandwidth incessantly polling for data. Solution: Massive Distributed Information Storage (1.0Gb) with Selective Targeted Recall. No more Dumb Data Dump. Analytic Tools: 3,500 SOE, 100 DFR, up to 480 cycles, 128 samples / cy, 2-yr Data Log, directly available through multiple concurrent 10/100 Mbps Ethernet sessions to all interested departments.
Mount Up the Wings as Eagles
As these solution designs gained traction in the industry, Beckwith addressed his employees, “I see a huge tsunami coming, and we need to create the biggest flipping surfboard we can imagine to ride that sucker.” Fortunately, the company’s founder, Robert Beckwith, bought a large plot of land in 1972, so the company had plenty of room to grow. “The first tsunami hit in 2010, and we were ready for it, growing 83 percent in 2010 and 2011 without even blinking. In 2018, as we saw the second tsunami approaching, we had to have faith to invest heavily in higher capacity manufacturing equipment, new highly-trained employees, and manufacturing space. It hit in 2019 as we grew 33 percent, and we finished that year with a zero backlog of product that could be shipped,” recalls Beckwith.
My CEO, Chief Eternal Officer
Beckwith Electric is 100 percent family-owned and 100 percent made in the U.S., “but let me tell you why I am particularly proud to lead Beckwith Electric by sharing with you why we are in business,” cites Beckwith. First, there are people worldwide in the electric power industries, who want to spend hard-earned money on equipment that works. They want to buy it at a reasonable price. They want to receive it sometime before they’ve forgotten why they wanted it. And if it breaks, they want it fixed quickly with no excuse.
QUALITY – PRICE – DELIVERY – SERVICE
Second, there’s a crew of folks at Beckwith Electric who want to do just that for them. There are those in this world who believe that the only way to get ahead is to look out for #1 first. God’s word says—NOT SO! “We are to humbly serve others first. We are to treat the other guy like we want to be treated. We’re to consider his welfare above our own. None of us meet these goals to perfection, but if these aren’t our goals, then we don’t meet them at all.” A business, subject to the Lord, based on these goals, cannot fail. God won’t let it. In fact, He promises, “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.” So, when Beckwith Electric regards its customers’ needs more highly than its own and act accordingly, then God blesses the business more abundantly than we could ever imagine. “If we look out only for #1, that’s exactly how many we’ve got on our side. When we care for others first, to the Glory of God, we have all the creative power of the universe on our side,” concludes Beckwith.
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Company
Beckwith Electric
Headquarters
Largo, Florida
Management
Thomas Beckwith, CEO
Description
A premier provider of innovative and high-quality products, technical services, and solutions that meet the needs of customers involved in the production, transmission, and distribution of electric power
