Power at your fingertips
A DCB app for innovative substation design
ABB has developed a web tool that helps customers design a substation using disconnecting circuit breakers (DCBs), and then compare the results to conventional substation solutions in terms of footprint and construction, ownership, and outage costs. The innovative app is currently being showcased at Cigré 2014 technology fair in Paris.
Developed by ABB`s High Voltage Products business, the DCB Substation Solutions app is a free, easy-to-use online tool that demonstrates in a few simple steps how DCB technology provides long- and short-term savings by increasing availability and reducing substation space requirements and costs.
After configuring a DCB substation, users can view their design in 3D and e-mail the information generated, including 3D layouts, single-line diagrams and outage cost reduction calculations. They can also access additional information, such as customer references and a buyer’s guide.
The DCB Substation Solutions web tool is available for smartphones (iPhone or Android), iPad tablets or PC web browsers, and is designed to help customers understand and configure ABB`s new technologies in a simple way.
The app is being continually upgraded with new features, and will soon feature life cycle cost calculations in the compared solutions, to expand the demonstration of long-term and construction cost savings.
ABB developed the world`s first disconnecting circuit breaker in 2000, which combines the functionality of a circuit breaker, disconnector and earthing switch in a single unit, thereby reducing footprint up to 70 % and making installation easier. The DCB is ideal for all substation applications – indoor or outdoor, greenfield or refurbished.
ABB has installed more than 1,600 DCB units around the world at sites ranging from the Andes mountains in South America to seismically active areas of New Zealand to the snow and ice fields north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden.
ABB has lately integrated a fiber optic current sensor into the DCB, which can further reduce a substation footprint even more, and now offers a new platform of eco-efficient, high-voltage circuit breakers that use CO2 as the insulating and arc extinguishing medium instead of sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) gas, lowering the units’ global warming potential.
To try out the DCB Substation Solution app, paste the following link in your web browser: www.dcbsubstations.com