Approximately once a year, four regulators north of Meadow Lake experienced failures in the Beckwith automatic voltage regulator (AVR). Due to the extremely sandy soil, O&M staff suspected that these failures were caused by Ground Potential Rise (GPR) affecting the serial connection to the D20 RTU. In addition to the cost of replacement parts and reduced system reliability, the most distant site required a 1,200 km round trip for repairs.

Despite being a new employee at SaskPower, when I approached my manager with an idea to address the root cause of the issue, he authorized me to implement a “MacGyver” prototype solution. Noticing that the Beckwith AVR was equipped with a fiber optic option on its communication card, I replaced the copper serial cable between the transformer and the RTU in the control building with an all di-electric fiber optic cable and a data converter. After 12 years of continuous service, there have been zero failures.