S&C Opens Its New Asia Pacific Melbourne Office

S&C Electric Company, Asia Pacific, on March 6, 2019, hosted the opening of its new Asia Pacific Melbourne Office. With more than a 60-year presence in the Asia Pacific region, valued customers and key suppliers from across Australia attended the event to celebrate the occasion with the S&C team.

The office relocation provides a larger space that is equipped for a growing team, including on-site training facilities, video conferencing, an operating IntelliLab, and space for a developing product demonstration center. The evening of the opening event commenced with an official ribbon-cutting by Jason Lander, S&C Vice President–Asia Pacific, and Mike Edmonds, S&C Chief Commercial Officer. Special guests included Manny Miranda, Senior Vice President of Power Delivery at Florida Power & Light (FPL), and Michelle Taylor, Manager of Intelligent Grid New Technology at Energy Queensland in North Queensland.

Following the official ribbon-cutting, local Wurundjeri Elder, Uncle Colin Hunter, gave a Welcome to Country ceremony. This traditional ritual, which has been performed for tens of thousands of years, provided Hunter an opportunity to welcome S&C onto the land, ask for respect to be shown for the land, and offer the use of resources and safety in return while on the land. He also spoke about the history of Wurundjeri people and how Wurundjeri has transformed over time, mostly due to the settlement and development of Melbourne.

Taylor then provided a presentation on the working relationship between Energy Queensland and S&C that has existed since 2013, including the development of a battery-support system to extend the capacity of Energy Queensland single wire earth return (SWER) networks. Nearly 2 MWh of energy storage has been installed at various locations on those networks. S&C and Energy Queensland subsidiary Ergon Energy have worked together not only in the developmental aspects but also the in ongoing field support of the Grid Utility Support System (GUSS). GUSS deployment won a 2016 Engineering Excellence award from Engineers Australia, and S&C was a strong contributing system partner.

Miranda provided an overview of FPL and S&C’s working relationship, which includes FPL investing in a suite of S&C smart-grid solutions, including the installation of more than 80,000 TripSaver® II Cutout-Mounted Reclosers and more than 4,000 IntelliRupter® PulseCloser® Fault Interrupters, to provide greater segmentation and self-healing on feeders and to mitigate temporary outages from becoming permanent faults on laterals. These devices are now helping FPL avoid outages and save significant maintenance expenses annually.

Inspired by the success of these devices, FPL has collaborated with S&C to innovate the latest lateral-protection solution, the VacuFuse® Self-Resetting Interrupter, which was unveiled during the official opening.

Throughout the event, customers and suppliers were able to experience live product demonstrations conducted by the S&C team, including the operations of the TripSaver II recloser, the VacuFuse Self-Resetting Interrupter, and the Gang-Operation capability via Gateway Communications for TripSaver II recloser.