Franklin Electric

We translate our ability to design and manufacture intelligent grid monitoring devices that ensure uptime, to provide a cost-saving, proactive approach to critical asset maintenance

More recently, Franklin Electric Grid Solutions has been developed additional solutions for their monitoring and testing portfolios, namely, its circuit breaker monitoring solution called Optimizer 3 and its Celltron Advantage Digital handheld battery conductance tester. With its Optimizer 3 solution, the company is assisting its clients in tracking the performance and health of their MV & HV circuit breakers by allowing near-real-time updates on the equipment to asset owners via an ethernet or fiber-based DNP protocol that directly feeds into the user’s SCADA. At the same time, the Celltron Advantage Digital battery tester is a handheld product that measures battery signals and sends them directly to Franklin’s UNITE s/w platform. “Thanks to its ability to process the signal details completely in the digital domain, the Advantage Digital has much fewer components on its circuit board, which allows for faster and more accurate signal processing,” states Chris Chenoweth, National Sales Manager for the Americas at Franklin Electric Grid Solutions.

With such unmatched capabilities, Franklin Electric Grid Solutions has ignited several success stories since its inception. In one instance, the company helped multiple clients based in the Northeastern U.S. to effectively comply with the emerging regulations of the Northeast Power Coordinating Council (NPCC). Initially, after collaborating with Franklin Electric Grid Solutions, the customers had implemented the company’s circuit breaker monitoring solution successfully. Subsequently, when the NPCC introduced a new regulation that stated the physical separation of trip-circuit coils, the clients approached Franklin Electric Grid Solutions again because of non-compliance. “Our original implementation galvanically separated the trip-circuit coils, which was safe and effective, but did not comply with the new mandate,” explains Don Blust, Senior Product Manager at Franklin Electric Grid Solutions. Therefore, to help these customers comply with the new regulations, the company developed a new customized solution named Optimizer Trip Coil Isolator (OM-TCI), which allowed the customers to physically separate their trip-circuit coil connections, one feeding into the Optimizer Implementation and the other into OM-TCI. Once this was done, the customer reported continual success alongside effective compliance. Furthermore, after handling the initial engineering bugs, Franklin Electric Grid Solution’s OM-TCI product was chosen by more clients as a way to achieve best practices during their operations.

Similarly, Franklin Electric Grid Solutions has helped a plethora of other clients, helping them enhance the efficacy and efficiency of maintenance processes through increased visibility and data-driven insights into asset health and performance. And according to Blust, at the heart of the company’s success is its ability to always emphasize customer feedback and develop solutions that go beyond just the needs of a client to deliver real value in terms of customer satisfaction and significant time and cost-savings.

Moving forward, Franklin Electric Grid Solutions plans to launch its innovative Distribution Transformer Monitor (DTM), an industrial IoT product that will connect with padmount transformers (a historically unmonitored asset) and allow round-the-clock monitoring of critical aspects of the equipment’s health and performance. “DTM tracks the details of a padmount transformer and reports it back to the asset owner through UNITE, giving users a secure way to efficiently monitor their asset in a game-changing way,” adds Chenoweth. On the other hand, the company is also developing additional features for its UNITE platform and newer algorithms to its analytics capabilities to help clients better understand their assets and make data-driven decisions to ensure zero downtime.