- February 25, 2019
- NEMA Communications
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This piece was originally published in the January/February 2019 issue of electroindustry.
Kevin J. Cosgriff, NEMA President and CEO
As highlighted in this issue, where and how we get our power is changing. We still rely on large power plants, but rooftop solar panels, wind farms, and other sources are emerging in the market. Members of the NEMA Utility Products & Systems Division expect that this model of more distributed generation closer to where power is consumed—along the edge of the network, rather than
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- February 20, 2019
- NEMA Communications
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This piece was originally published in the January/February 2019 issue of electroindustry.
Ann Brandstadter, Manager, Standards Publications and Marketing, NEMA
NEMA GMOD 1-2018 Reviewing the Business Case and Cost Recovery for Grid Modernization covers grid modernization investments, summarizes the benefits of grid technologies, and documents cost recovery mechanisms and business cases. It is available at no charge to NEMA Members and to the general public in hard copy and electronic download for $100 at www.nema.org/grid-modernization-report.
NEMA BE P1-2018 Building System Efficiency Modeling—Improving the Accuracy of
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- February 18, 2019
- NEMA Communications
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This piece was originally published in the January/February 2019 issue of electroindustry.
Craig Updyke, Director, Trade and Commercial Affairs, NEMA
As noted in “Outlook for 116th Congress” (page 16), Congress is expected in 2019 to consider the new U.S.–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), intended as a modernization of and replacement for the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). At present, the prospects are colored by competing priorities: on one hand, demands for changes in the compromise agreement from members of Congress from both sides of
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- February 12, 2019
- NEMA Communications
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By Clark Silcox, NEMA General Counsel
There is a revolution in lighting underway, and it is being led by lighting consumers, retailers, and manufacturers. We have reached the energy savings goals for the Standard light bulb sought by Congress in 2007. The tipping point has already occurred, and there is no turning back. It is not about to be “rolled back” by government regulation as a few have mistakenly argued.
Our colleagues in the energy efficiency advocacy community are asserting that the
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- February 11, 2019
- NEMA Communications
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This piece was originally published in the January/February 2019 issue of electroindustry.
Mike Stone, West Coast Field Representative, NEMA
In the Western United States, approximately 80 utilities collaborated with the Electric Utility Service Equipment Requirements Committee (EUSERC), which was formed in 1983 by the merger of two different groups in Southern and Northern California that had been active since the 1940s. There are 14 Western states that have utility members represented in EUSERC. The NEMA West Coast Field Representative and an Underwriters Laboratories (UL)
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- February 8, 2019
- NEMA Communications
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This piece was originally published in the January/February 2019 issue of electroindustry.
Brian Marchionini, PMP, Senior Program Manager, NEMA
Smart grid devices, systems, and applications require extensive data exchange, necessitating well-defined interfaces to transfer and translate this data from point to point across the grid.
Clarifying the communications protocol and data model performance requirements is essential to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and its ongoing update of the Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability Standards (see infographic below).
NIST has published three
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- February 4, 2019
- NEMA Communications
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This piece was originally published in the January/February 2019 issue of electroindustry.
Gerard Winstanley, Program Manager, NEMA
The NEMA Capacitor Section is initiating a project to develop a new Standard for direct current power capacitors rated ½ kVAR and larger. The Capacitor Section is part of the Utility Products & Systems Division and covers the use of power capacitors for power factor improvement and harmonic filtering.
Power capacitors are used in power generation, transmission and distribution, and industrial applications.
The need for a dc capacitor Standard
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- February 1, 2019
- NEMA Communications
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This piece was originally published in the January/February 2019 issue of electroindustry.
Jonathan Stewart, Industry Director, Utility Products & Systems Division, NEMA
Just as the electrical power grid is developing into a system of systems with millions of interconnected parts, so, too, is the NEMA Utility Products & Systems Division moving toward an integrated coalition of product Sections.
The Division is creating a Leadership Committee that reflects a movement within NEMA from a focus on being a product-centric technical organization to one that looks at
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- January 28, 2019
- NEMA Communications
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Steve Griffith, Industry Director, Transportation Division, NEMA
The Internet of Things (IoT) wave was evident more than ever at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held this month in Las Vegas where more than 4,500 exhibitors showcased their latest tech innovations. The impact of 5G across the industry was evident throughout the conference. From transportation, virtual reality, sports technology, and digital health, 5G is a game changer.
How does this affect the industries into which NEMA and MITA Members sell their products
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- January 28, 2019
- NEMA Communications
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This piece was originally published in the January/February 2019 issue of electroindustry.
In 2016, NEMA published NEMA MGRD 1-2016 Powering Microgrids for the 21st- Century Electrical System, a white paper introducing the concept of microgrids as an integral component of the power delivery system of the 21st century. Microgrids, once viewed as islanded systems of generation and load, valued mostly for their ability to disconnect from the grid and serve individual customer facilities during outages, are now seen as part of distribution system
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- January 25, 2019
- NEMA Communications
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This piece was originally published in the January/February 2019 issue of electroindustry.
Garry Golden, Futurist, Forward Elements
Mr. Golden consults on issues shaping business and society in the 21st century.
For years, fuel cells have been a disruptive technology that failed to meet expectations.
The technology gained popularity in the late 1990s as Ballard Power stocks went up and down with the dot-com boom and bust. Since the early 2000s, fuel cells found narrow success in remote power systems for telecommunications networks and as an uptime-focused
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- January 21, 2019
- NEMA Communications
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This piece was originally published in the January/February 2019 issue of electroindustry.
Gary Rackliffe, Vice President, Smart Grids and Grid Modernization, ABB Inc.
Similar to the smart grid concept introduced by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA 2007), “grid modernization” is both difficult to define and subject to varying opinions.
In addition to operational and information technology (OT/IT) deployment, grid modernization builds on the previous smart grid definitions and addresses several underpinnings:
Grid reliability and resiliency, especially the frequent occurrence and severity of
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- January 18, 2019
- NEMA Communications
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This piece was originally published in the January/February 2019 issue of electroindustry.
Ivan Jovanovic, Managing Director, Cable Accessories, G&W Electric Company
For decades, oil-filled terminations have been the norm for high-voltage cables. Moving away from this traditional technology are pre-molded dry-type outdoor terminations.
In 2018, 138 kV pre-molded dry-type outdoor terminations were installed in three different regions of the world for the first time: Malaysia, the Philippines, and Ansonia, Connecticut; each applied mechanical shrink installation technology to new and existing grids.
To meet the
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- January 14, 2019
- NEMA Communications
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This piece was originally published in the January/February 2019 issue of electroindustry.
Richard Glick, Commissioner, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently concluded that we are on track to see global temperatures rise by 1.5°C as early as 2030. The Trump Administration’s most recent National Climate Assessment also indicates that, absent a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the annual economic consequences of climate change will reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars by the
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- January 9, 2019
- NEMA Communications
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This piece was originally published in the January/February 2019 issue of electroindustry.
When the 116th Congress convenes on January 3, 2019, NEMA Members will face a two-party federal legislature for the first time since 2013 when Democrats held a majority in the U.S. Senate. Democrats’ new majority in the House of Representatives, coupled with Republicans’ majority in the Senate, presents exciting challenges and opportunities as we work to achieve advocacy objectives of the Association as well as specific product groups.
We expect
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- January 7, 2019
- NEMA Communications
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This piece was originally published in the January/February 2019 issue of electroindustry.
This is truly an exciting time to be an electrical manufacturer.
Over the course of my career, I have had the opportunity to be engaged in a number of NEMA industries, from lighting to electric motors. But today is different. Not only must we compete on the basis of well-understood product parameters, but also on a new market underpinning that requires a value based on the ability of these products
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- January 4, 2019
- NEMA Communications
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This piece was originally published in the January/February 2019 issue of electroindustry.
Interest in transactive energy (TE) is growing, as evidenced by New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision discussions; as piloted by the national labs; and as implemented in the United States (by companies like Introspective Systems and LO3), Denmark (by PowerMatcher), and Australia (by Power Ledger).
These and similar tactics are driven by the realization that new approaches are needed to efficiently and reliably integrate distributed energy resources (DERs) and adapt
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- December 28, 2018
- NEMA Communications
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This piece was originally published in the December 2018 issue of electroindustry.
Caption: G.P. Russ Chaney, Chairman of the Board of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), left, presents the Emerging Young Professional award to Muhammad Ali, NEMA Program Manager. Photo courtesy of ANSI
As 2018 concludes, we salute the hard work by NEMA staff that led to the following awards and achievements:
Muhammad Ali: Named ANSI Emerging Young Professional.
Ken Gettman: Received IEC 1906 Award from IEC Technical Committee 121, and recognized as an IEEE
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- December 26, 2018
- NEMA Communications
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This piece was originally published in the December 2018 issue of electroindustry.
Craig Updyke Director, Trade and Commercial Affairs
The Trump Administration’s successful conclusion of negotiations September 30 on a United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) hastened its October 16 notifications to Congress of intent to enter into new trade talks with the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Japan.
All four actions set clocks in motion—60 days until USMCA could be signed and 90 days before proposed new negotiations may begin. While reviewing the USMCA terms,
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- December 21, 2018
- NEMA Communications
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This piece was originally published in the December 2018 issue of electroindustry.
Madeleine Bugel, Manager, State and International Government Relations, NEMA
NEMA President and CEO Kevin J. Cosgriff traveled to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in October to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization (SASO) on a Technical Cooperation Program (TCP). Mr. Cosgriff met with Dr. Saad Othman Al-kasabi, the governor of SASO, to discuss the TCP and the opportunities it creates for collaboration. They discussed SASO’s role
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