S&C & Tantalus Forge Strategic Alliance to Enable Grid Optimization and Rapid Self-Healing Solutions for Municipal & Cooperative Utilities

TUNet® communications approved for use in S&C’s IntelliCap® 2000 Automatic Capacitor Controls

ORLANDO, Fla. – February 9, 2016 – S&C Electric Company, a smart grid leader shaping the future of power delivery, and Tantalus Systems, a smart grid platform partner for municipal and cooperative utilities, announced today at the global 2016 DistribuTECH conference the formation of a strategic alliance. This strategic alliance allows utilities to support grid optimization and rapid self-healing solutions through the use of a powerful layered communication architecture.

As part of this strategic alliance, S&C is approving the use of the Tantalus DA-1710 Bridge Modem™ in S&C’s IntelliCap® 2000 Automatic Capacitor Control to facilitate grid optimization applications such as Volt-VAR Optimization. This joint capability allows utilities to automate capacitor controls and voltage regulators to reduce peak demand, maximizing the value from their TUNet® AMI communications investments.

Additionally, S&C’s SpeedNet™ portfolio of high speed communication solutions can be integrated with TUNet communications to enable S&C’s IntelliTeam® SG Automation Restoration System to rapidly self-heal targeted areas of the distribution grid and to allow utilities to gain further control and verification of self-healing operations.

“In order to deliver rapid, self-healing distribution automation applications, a communications network must provide crucial elements, such as high throughput and low latency,” said Donivon Hettich, Director – Grid Control and Connectivity for S&C. “The typically deployed AMI communications network does not deliver the performance levels demanded by rapid self-healing grid applications, which reduce outages from minutes to seconds. The integration of Tantalus’ TUNet AMI capabilities with S&C’s SpeedNet™ high speed communications portfolio will deliver a network capable of supporting both grid optimization and rapid self-healing distribution automation applications, such as S&C’s IntelliTeam SG Automation Restoration System. By combining our solutions with Tantalus, we jointly enable utilities to attack outage prone areas with a cost-effective, layered communication network architecture.”

“Tantalus continues to successfully deliver smart grid applications such as voltage optimization via SCADA integration and power status notification through the TUNet network,” said Peter Londa, President & CEO of Tantalus. “Our new Bridge Modem leverages TUNet’s distributed computing capability to support the delivery of standardized DNP3 messaging across the TUNet AMI platform, thus extending visibility and control to end-of-line Distribution Automation devices on the distribution grid. By layering S&C’s industry leading communications with TUNet, our utility users will gain expanded access to powerful grid optimization and rapid self-healing solutions.”