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![Con Edison is testing ULC's Cable Splicing Machine](https://www.therobotreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/ULC-CSM-End-in-Machine-WebRes2.jpg)
Con Edison is testing the Cable Splicing Machine. Supply: ULC Applied sciences
Vitality and utility corporations are turning to robots to enhance reliability, resilience, and employee security. ULC Applied sciences LLC and Con Edison Firm of New York Inc. at this time stated they’ve developed and field-tested a machine to automate the termination of medium-voltage cables.
The brand new prototype Cable Splicing Machine will permit utility staff to enhance the repeatability and consistency of essential connections inside the electrical grid, stated the companions. It could possibly automate cable finish preparation whereas minimizing employee publicity to excessive voltages, added ULC.
“At Con Edison, employee security is paramount,” stated Patrick McHugh, senior vice chairman for Con Edison Electrical Operations, in a launch. “The expertise used on this instrument will allow our staff to splice excessive voltage cables, effectively, uniformly, and, most significantly, extra safely.”
“If you scale back the chance of performing hundreds of splices every year, enhance their accuracy and effectivity, it advantages staff, grid reliability, price effectiveness, and worth,” he stated. “That’s a win, win, win for Con Edison, its staff, clients, and the trade.”
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ULC designs Cable Splicing Machine to deal with complexity
ULC Applied sciences stated it has developed and commercialized robots, machine studying, and inspection companies to assist power and industrial corporations restore and keep their pipelines and significant infrastructure. The Hauppauge, N.Y.-based unit of SPX Applied sciences Inc. claimed that its methods can assist clients reduce public disruption, scale back greenhouse gasoline emissions, enhance security, and reduce prices.
The brand new Cable Splicing Machine can performing complicated operations on feeder cables in underground vaults, defined ULC. It cited as major drivers the necessity to enhance the protection of utility staff, shorten the general feeder outage length to scale back the stress on the grid, and enhance community resiliency.
“That is notably vital as underground distribution feeder outages happen throughout adversarial climate situations resembling warmth waves and storms that place vital stress on the electrical grid,” ULC stated. The machine consists of a number of impartial subsystems managed by way of a centralized processing laptop and consumer interface.
“The Cable Splicing Machine may be secured onto the center of an uncut cable within the discipline and makes use of electrical actuators to offer exact coordinated movement alongside the axial and circumferential instructions, together with steady 360-degree operation,” stated Ali Asmari, director of infrastructure operations at ULC. “The machine’s instrument plate consists of quite a few instruments able to stripping again every layer of the cable to a desired dimension utilizing precision instrument depth controls.”
With the analysis and growth part full, ULC is working with Con Edison to replace the tooling so it may well handle various kinds of cables sooner than earlier than. A number of auxiliary subsystems can autonomously perform further steps resembling adaptively shorting and reducing the cable, stated the corporate.
Dwell digicam feeds permit an operator to observe and confirm your entire course of from exterior the manhole with no bodily human intervention, ULC stated. The corporate gives its expertise by way of a robots-as-a-service (RaaS) mannequin.
![ULC's Cable Splicing Machine](https://www.therobotreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Cable-Spl-Machine-Full-Angled-2024-02-06-1200px.jpg)
The Cable Splicing Machine consists of automated options for finishing complicated operations. Supply: ULC Applied sciences
Con Edison conducts discipline trials
Con Edison Firm of New York is a subsidiary of Consolidated Edison Inc., one of many largest investor-owned energy-delivery corporations within the U.S., reporting about $16 billion in annual revenues and $64 billion in property.
The regulated utility firm offers electrical service in New York Metropolis and New York’s Westchester County. It additionally offers gasoline service in Manhattan, the Bronx, and elements of Queens and Westchester, in addition to and steam service in Manhattan.
Con Edison and ULC started discipline trials of the Cable Splicing Machine this yr. The splicers lowered the machine into the construction after which inserted the cable contained in the machine. It accomplished three autonomous operations to organize the cable in roughly 25 to half-hour per every part of the medium-voltage cable.
ULC plans to exhibit its expertise in Sales space 760 on the upcoming Distributech Convention, which can be from Feb. 26 to March 1 on the Orange County Conference Middle in Orlando, Fla.