In the spring of 2005, an engineer consulted with his new colleagues about consolidating assets from the recent merger. They discussed converting at least 11,000 relay records by mid-summer into the parent company’s established P&C maintenance system.

The deadline was the same for another matter: Acquainting almost 20 newly-acquired field technicians—now under his watch—with the new maintenance procedures they’d have to adopt.

Staying current with all other “business as usual” projects during this timeframe compounded the outlay of work Chris Ransom from AmerenUE had before him. He is the consulting engineer who held the responsibility of getting Illinois Power Company online with the St. Louis-based Ameren Corporation, an investor-owned electric and gas utility formed from the 1997 merger of Union Electric Company and Central Illinois Public Service Company, and grown by the acquisition of Central Illinois Light Company in 2003. This was the third acquisition Ransom had seen since being with Ameren.

Merging data, training new personnel, staying current with maintenance—these matters required effective planning, time management, and allocation of resources. Working to Ransom’s advantage in the wake of the previous two acquisitions were software systems he’d use to leverage an advantage in this one: ENOSERV RTS™ and ENOSERV PowerBase™.

Ransom articulated the scope of the work he had before him to the software engineers at ENOSERV and established the timeframe for delivering 2 critical milestones: 1) converting the 11,000+ relay records from IP’s Maximo-based database into ENOSERV PowerBase; and 2) getting the new services personnel from IP onboard with ENOSERV RTS.

The importance of PowerBase and RTS in this case has to do with the critical needs these 2 software systems meet. PowerBase is a substation settings management database system that interoperates with other engineering software applications to automate the information exchange between P&C workgroups. Prior to PowerBase, a company’s options in attaining such an information exchange were either based in handling and housing paper setting sheets and test reports, or developing an application internally. (Typically the latter doesn’t always achieve for its creators the level of functionality desired by its end Users.) PowerBase was born in response to the need to provide a secure location for all substation equipment information enabled for data sharing in between workgroups in an automated environment.

ENOSERV RTS is a multi-platform relay testing software system that actually controls different test sets for either manual or fully-automated testing on electromechanical and microprocessor-based relays. RTS is a complete relay testing package that also automates relay test reporting. Like PowerBase, the database in RTS holds relay settings and so companies that employ both RTS and PowerBase achieve the 2-way data transfer between workgroups mentioned above and of those, Ameren is a case in point:

“Each operating company had their own testing procedures and we wanted to use PowerBase and RTS as the tool to bring the operating companies together,” said Chris Ransom. “We now have all relays from all operating companies in one database and are presently working towards getting each operating company to use one common test database using RTS.”

Ransom outsourced the data conversions to the Technical Services division at ENOSERV. The July 1 milestone for populating PowerBase with Illinois Power’s 11,000+ Maximo-based relay records was met ahead of schedule. Ransom hired ENOSERV to train the 20+ Illinois Power services personnel on RTS. Now all 4 operating divisions use RTS, in effect standardizing on software while continuing to use the equipment they’re accustomed to.

Ultimately, what ENOSERV is capable of doing for its utility and contract services clients is unifying their work practices in a standardized methodology for the most effective protection maintenance program possible. By uniting different engineering software tools and even controlling different relay test equipment, the ENOSERV suite of software creates a holistic system capable of transferring the most up-to-date relay data among engineering and services workgroups wherever they may be located.

For years, companies have seen new technologies evolve to become fairly commonplace throughout the electric industry. (The advent of the microprocessor-based relay and the automated relay test set are 2 examples of this fact.) Also, companies have weathered corporate restructuring and waves of mergers and acquisitions—not to mention deregulation. This dynamic era has put great stress on management, IT, engineering and services personnel to adapt quickly to whatever comes their way.

ENOSERV software is built specifically to address the needs of the workgroups responsible for protection relay maintenance and reliability. Beginning with RTS, ENOSERV gave field services technicians a software tool for automating each aspect of relay testing, no matter what test set they use. RTS controls equipment from Doble, Manta, Megger, Omicron, SMC and others so that technicians can be freed from the hassle of maintaining disparate database systems they otherwise would if their company had test sets from different manufacturers.

Beyond being multi-platform, RTS is simply the best relay testing software tool available. As much as it is possible for a relay testing software to be ready to test right out of the box, RTS is. RTS has over 5,000 pre-written tests within over 400 relay test plans built from the relay manufacturers’ information leaflets. It “talks” directly with Schweitzer relays to download settings and tests those relays at digital speed with virtually hands-free routines. It also features the FasTest™ module for automating the process of building new tests.

ENOSERV PowerBase is an “active” database in the sense that substation data—particularly relay settings—are not only stored, but are capable of being moved to and from other engineering software systems. PowerBase supports 2-way interoperability with ENOSERV RTS, CAPE (Electrocon), Cascade (Digital Inspections), ProTest (Doble), SEL Relay Assistant & AcSELerator (Schweitzer) and automates relay data exchange with 1-Liner from Aspen. PowerBase even links to Maximo and SAP management systems.

ENOSERV is in business to automate and standardize all aspects of protection relaying between engineering and services workgroups no matter what software and equipment they presently use. Perhaps greatest among all other benefits, the ENOSERV suite of software tools promotes the clearest, most accurate and efficient reliability reporting for regulatory bodies like NERC and FERC.