Electrical Substation Technologies Live Online Forum April 2025

Electricity Today T&D Live Online Forums

Focus Agenda Presenters

April 30, 2025

Live online event hosted by The Electricity Forum.

The focus of our Electrical Substation Live Online Forum will be substation reliability, security and stability. The changing environment in the energy sector creates a need for substation system operators to be able to robustly evaluate the impact that possible measures have on the dependability of supply of their networks. Electrical substations are is considered an important part of the power grid, and this has gained significant focus for electrical power system planners and operators to improve reliability. Our FREE Live Online Forum is a great way to learn from leading Electrical Substation professionals who are speaking on subjects about current or future technologies for reliable power substations.

45 minutes presentation includes 10 minutes of Q&A.

1:00 pm - 1:45 pm

Critter Guard

It's NOT if, but WHEN!
Squirrels and other "critters" are the #1 cause of preventable power outages for utilities. Chances are – it will happen to you. This presentation will explore Critter Guard's approach to preventing these animal outages.

1:45 pm - 2:30 pm

PSI (T&R Test Equipment)
The presentation is a brief introduction to T&R Test Equipment Ltd, followed by a look at relays and how they fit into a protection scheme and how they are tested with a look at a flexible test solution from T&R Test Equipment Ltd in the form of the New 50ADM-P Relay SCITS Test set.How the new tester is an ideal solution for relay testing both Mechanical and Digital Relays.

2:30 pm - 3:15 pm

Zensol

Methodology for Electrical Substation Maintenance Programs

3:15 pm - 4:00 pm

SDT Ultrasound Solutions

Ultrasound for Reliable Electrical Systems

Ultrasound technology plays a critical role in the early detection of electrical faults that threaten system reliability, safety, and uptime. This presentation explores how airborne and structure-borne ultrasound can be used to identify partial discharge phenomena—corona, tracking, and arcing—long before they evolve into costly or catastrophic failures. Attendees will learn how ultrasound complements infrared inspections, enhances preventive maintenance workflows, and provides a safe, non-intrusive method to monitor energized equipment in real time.

John Sims

President & Owner

Critter Guard

John is the president and owner of Critter Guard. He has led and/or managed product development and global sales & operations management teams in energy and process industry for more than 30 years. He holds a bachelor of science in chemical engineering from Mizzou. He resides in the Wichita, KS area.

Gary Biggs

Commercial & Sales Director

T&R Test Equipment

Gary Biggs has worked in the testing industry since 1993 starting as a distributor selling a wide range of test instrumentation. In 2017, he came to T&R Test equipment Ltd as the Commercial and Sales Director.

Dr. Fouad Brikci

President

Zensol Automation, Inc.

Fouad Brikci obtained a Doctorate in Electronics in 1977 and a master's degree in Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Automation in 1975 both from the University of Bordeaux, France. During his 40 years and more of experience, he was a lecturer at the Ecole Polytechnique in Algiers, Algeria and a researcher at CNRS-LAAS, Toulouse, France. He is currently the President of Zensol Automation, Inc., a company founded in 1990 and located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Zensol is a world leader in the field of acoustic diagnostics for circuit breakers and on-line tap changers (OLTC). Zensol also has extensive expertise in conventional maintenance testing applied to high-voltage circuit breakers.

Allan Rienstra

Director of International Business Development

SDT Ultrasound Solutions

Allan is the Director of International Business Development at SDT Ultrasound Solutions, a global leader in ultrasound-based condition monitoring with operations on every continent, including Antarctica. Now in his 35th year with SDT, Rienstra has helped organizations around the world adopt better practices for asset reliability and electrical system monitoring through a proven process: inspect, detect, measure, trend, analyze, act, and report.
He is the author of Hear More: A Guide to Utilizing Ultrasound for Predictive Maintenance and Leak Detection and serves on the Standards Council of Canada as a direct advisor to the International Standards Organization, contributing to ISO 18436-8 for ultrasound in condition monitoring.

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