Bentley Systems, Incorporated, today announced that American Electric Power (AEP), one of the largest electric utilities in the United States, has chosen to enhance its electric substation design practices with Bentley Substation. By taking advantage of Bentley Substation’s integrated set of capabilities combining intuitive 3D modeling, electrical design functionality, and automatic bills of materials and report generation, AEP will gain from B/IM, Bentley’s advancement of the reach and benefits of “BIM” – for better-performing assets through increased depth of information modeling, and better-performing projects through increased breadth of information mobility. As a result, AEP anticipates faster design cycles and improved collaboration across physical and electrical design disciplines.
AEP selected Bentley Substation based on a careful review of commercially available alternatives, the productivity benefits demonstrated at other utilities, and the estimated improvement the software would make in its own design processes. AEP is making Bentley Substation available to the more than 100 staff members in its transmission and engineering organization and plans to extend the software’s use to also include its primary outsourced engineering contractors.
Richard Zambuni, Bentley industry marketing director, utilities, communications, and government, said, “We are very pleased that AEP has selected Bentley Substation to design greenfield and brownfield projects faster, more cost-effectively, and with higher quality. AEP joins the growing number of owner-operator utilities that are benefiting from the enormous productivity advantages of intelligent substation design.”