Avista's smart grid deployment

Avista Utilities from Spokane Washington has received to ARRA stimulus grants to deploy smart grid technologies in two different regions of its service territory. The core technology of the projects is a Distribution Management System (DMS) that will enable automatic restoration after faults, active voltage and var management and remote operation of distribution equipment. The DMS will be integrated with Avista's Outage Management System (OMS) to maintain one system of record. In order to enable the real time operations, Avista is upgrading substation controls and equipment to allow for the remote control through the DMS. Also, distribution circuits are being upgraded with switches that have voltage and current sensing technologies along remotely operable capacitor banks. Field devices will be communicated through a wide area network and substations will use a fiber circuit from the field to the central office.