Some updates: I submitted my two blogs about the Smart Grid to a newsletter for one of the groups within the IEEE that I am a member. It is the IEEE GOLD, Affinity group. They published my one article back in their June 2011 edition. The following is the link: http://www.ieee.org/membership_services/membership/gold/gold_rush_june2011.pdf
Hopefully my second entry will be published in the March 2012 edition.
The Long Island Section of the IEEE will also be presenting an award to me at the end of March for "Outstanding Young Engineer"
As I mentioned, I changed companies. Consulting tends to be very cyclical and with the struggling economy, it is even more so. I chose to leave the consulting business and join a manufacturing company. The new company manufactures Medium Voltage Switchgear, similar to the company I visited in February of last year, refer to my previous post "Factory Acceptance Test of 15kV Gear".
The new company is PACS Industries, Inc. with their headquarters in Bethpage, NY and their manufacturing facility in Mount Vernon, OH. Their website is here:http://www.pacsindustries.com/
A picture of the manufactuing facility in Ohio is here:
So, in case you were wondering what we do at PACS, here is a little narrative. We manufacture custom switchgear from 5kV to 38kV as well as some outdoor substation equipment up to 69kV. This involves the preliminary design of physical drawings showing how the gear is to be laid out and the preliminay one-lines, three lines and DC Schematics. These drawings are then approved or revised by the customer and then released for the assembly process to begin. Typical gear takes about 20-22 weeks to complete. I'll include some pictures in my next post. We also have a line of Arc-Resistant switchgear. Typical clients include: Metro-North, GE, Siemens, LIRR, and various other transportation, petro-chemical, and industrial clients, both domestically and aborad. We have also recently provided gear for some wind farms throughout the country. Basically anyone that requires a lot of power and is buying or will buy primary power from their utility is a potential customer.
It's kind of funny being on the manufacturing end now. When I consulted I would develop the drawings that I now design switchgear off of. The manufacturing end is a lot quicker of a cycle though. When consulting, you see a project from the proposal stage, when the client only has a general idea of what they want. When the project has gone through design it is finally clear what the whole job is, then it is constructed and it goes from concept to reality. This whole process can take a few years if not longer. On the manufacturing end, at PACS, everything is drawn and built within 26 weeks. In that 26 weeks, so much happens that it is truly an amazing process. As a project manager I am following the job until it leaves the factory. This involves an extreme amount of information that needs to be relayed back and forth to the client and the shop floor. This constant relaying and quick turn-around is what makes it so interesting though. You have a defined goal and you can see it materialize, so at the end of the day, you've made something tangible. I'm really happy I made the change and I hope the industry stays as busy as it is, if not busier.
Stay tuned for some switchgear related posts.
