February 9, 2016 – S&C Electric Company and Tantalus Systems announced they have formed a strategic alliance, which they say will allow utilities to support grid optimization and self-healing solutions through the use of a layered communication architecture.

As part of this alliance, S&C says it 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, the companies explain, maximizing the value from their TUNet AMI communications investments.

Additionally, S&C notes its 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 of grid control and connectivity for S&C. “By combining our solutions with Tantalus, we jointly enable utilities to attack outage prone areas with a cost-effective, layered communication network architecture.”