We are pleased to announce that Mr. Otto Lynch has joined us at Power Line Systems. Many of you know Otto from his 11 years in the Black & Veatch transmission engineering department. Otto will be supplementing our product development, technical support and training capabilities as well as organizing regional user group meetings. Otto can be reached at our Portland office 503-885-0262 or by email to otto@powline.com
We are also pleased to announce that ESKOM, the world's fourth largest utility, has not only adopted PLS-CADD as their company standard but has also become the Power Line Systems agent for Africa. The PLS-CADD contact at ESKOM is Dr. Dzevad Muftic who can be reached at 11-800-5336 or by email to dzevad.muftic@eskom.co.za.
We had a very successful user group session following the Power Engineers conference in March. Of particular interest to many people is the new Real-Time Line Thermal Limit Monitoring system that Power Line Systems is developing with a number of partners. During the general discussion following the presentations, many users requested a mechanism by which PLS-CADD could check broken conductor and unbalanced ice loading conditions. We have made this feature a high priority due to the amount of interest shown. An interesting example of the effects of unbalanced ice loading is shown on the SAGSEC page of our web site.
While we have been focused on the Real-Time Rating version of PLS-CADD, we haven't neglected the standard version. We added an AutoCad 2000 DXF export option for better results in this latest version of AutoCad. We have also removed the longstanding planar structure limitation, which required all attachments to be within the structure's transverse plane. This last change improves PLS-CADD's ability to model box arms and out of plane cross arms.
We are nearing completion of TOWER version 5 which will be the most significant upgrade of TOWER since
it moved from DOS to Windows in 1994. Version 5 adds all of the user interface improvements that PLS-POLE
users are familiar with to TOWER. These improvements include: undo of all operations, customizable reports, results
available in spreadsheets as well as reports, improved warning and error checking and many other enhancements.
Our transmission users will be happy to see the interaction diagrams support, improved insulator modeling
and addition
of swing brackets while our communications users will benefit from an automated mast generator. TOWER 5 also
updates our ECCS implementation, adds CENELEC (draft version of the common European code) and adds EDF (French national) codes.
TOWER version 5 will ship with a completely rewritten and vastly improved manual.
For a preview of what is coming in TOWER 5 see the
TOWER 5 web page. TOWER 5 is in alpha testing right now and should
ship this fall.
We have two separate week long training opportunities scheduled in the next six months. These classes will be held at the EPRI facility in Haslet, Texas July 17-21 and November 6-10. Additional information can be found at the EPRI training web page. Due to class size limits we had to turn away a number of people from our June 19-23 training session in Vancouver. The EPRI classes will likely fill up quickly so please sign up soon if you are interested.
We will be exhibiting at the CIGRE Expo 2000 in Paris August 28th through the 31th. If you attend the exposition, please stop by our booth to see demonstrations of PLS-POLE, TOWER version 5 and the latest in PLS-CADD technology.
The current shipping versions of our software are as follows:
If you are interested in obtaining the current shipping release of any of our applications, please send us email at info@powline.com. As always, we welcome your suggestions and comments on our software.
Best Regards,
Staff of Power Line Systems, Inc.
