CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

28 July 2009

Product News

First Intra-Operable Software for Intelligent Substation Design Speeds Project Delivery and Reduces Costs

Bentley Systems, Incorporated announced the release of Bentley Substation V8i, the first intra-operable software product for intelligent electrical and physical substation design. This productive software speeds project delivery and reduces costs by providing:

•  Intelligent substation information models that allow distributed users to work efficiently with federated data in a single environment;

•  The most complete set of substation engineering and design tools available with a common graphical user interface, making the software easy to learn;

•  Integration with the ProjectWise system for connecting people and information to facilitate engineering content management and team collaboration in support of streamlined workflows.

Bentley Substation delivers intelligent infrastructure for substations by supporting all of the key components and requirements of an electric substation – from physical layout to electrical schematics for protection and control, grounding grid, lightning protection, panel layout, and control house and lighting design. In addition, it intra-operates with Bentley’s broad portfolio of software offerings, including civil engineering for site design and selection and architectural design for building modeling.

Bentley COO Malcolm Walter said, “Our new substation product underscores Bentley’s commitment to helping our users engineer the 21st century utility. Together with our solutions for power generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure, Bentley Substation V8i completes our end-to-end solution for today’s utilities, and uniquely provides the breadth and depth of software to design, build, and operate the intelligent infrastructure that’s the foundation of the smart grid – and ultimately supports the creation of intelligent cities.”

Bentley Substation V8i combines powerful electrical design with full 3D modeling. The electrical design tools deliver integrated intelligent drawing and automatic report generation to quickly and easily create electrical schematics, cable and wiring routes, and panel layouts. The 3D modeling, coupled with the software’s built-in grounding grid layout and wire sag algorithms, empowers users to optimize substation site layout and minimize on-site problems by dealing with clearances, interferences, and other potential construction issues early in the project lifecycle.

By replacing traditional 2D CAD, paper-based workflows, and disparate collections of software with the advanced 2D and 3D integrated tools built into Bentley Substation, project teams can reduce substation electrical system design time by more than 30 percent. As a result, organizations can do more work with fewer people, all while saving money and improving project quality.

Bentley Substation also features a comprehensive database that includes more than 2 million up-to-date electrical parts. Having immediate access to this extensive repository of parts data helps engineers quickly generate accurate bills of materials for both electrical and physical design work and enables organizations to implement parts standardization, further enhancing quality and reducing costs.

To help overcome the challenges associated with locating new substations in communities, Bentley Substation also provides full 3D modeling integrated with terrain models and advanced visualization tools. This makes it easy to communicate design intent to stakeholders and expedites early acceptance, reducing business risks and speeding regulatory approvals.

Commenting on the release of Bentley Substation, Juan Torres Pozas, networks product manager at IBERDROLA Engineering and Construction, a leading energy engineering company, said, “We had been looking for a suite of software that could address our pressing need to systematize our processes for designing substations. Every substation involves a substantial amount of electrical, physical layout, and civil engineering work. There are tools for automating electrical processes and facilitating the design of cabling, wiring, and cable routing policies, but physical layout and civil engineering tasks are still largely done manually, using 2D drawings. CAD software can be used, but it is not integrated into the overall product. Bentley took one of its core products and extended it to support our key requirement – integrated electrical system design and 3D physical layout design. This will significantly increase our substation design productivity and eliminate mistakes caused by a lack of project coordination.”

For additional information about Bentley Substation V8i, visit http://www.bentley.com/substation.

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