Southern States, LLC

Southern States recently announced successful compliance with the ISO 9001:2015 certification process. This quality management certificate is in respect to the “design, sale, and service of substation, transmission, and distribution high voltage switching equipment.”You can view the official certificate here.

To be recognized as an ISO 9001:2015 certified company, Southern States was required to “demonstrate its ability to consistently provide products and services that meet customer and applicable statutory and regulatory requirements,” as well as “enhance customer satisfaction through the effective application of the quality management system, including processes for improvement.”

What Does It Mean to be ISO 9001:2015 Certified?

ISO 9001:2015 is an internationally recognized standard that can provide customers assurance they are receiving the upmost quality in the products and/or services they receive. Additionally, it signals a company’s continuous commitment to improvement towards cost efficiency, manufacturing processes, and their ability to deliver customer satisfaction consistently.

With over one million residential and commercial customers, one southeastern utility recognized the need for a modular reactive power compensation solution that could add reliability and operational flexibility to the grid. Southern States, in partnership with a leading manufacturer of capacitor banks, worked with the utility to create a two trailer mobile solution that included a 115 kV, 30 MVAR capacitor bank, current limiting reactors, arrestors, single phase potential transformers for station service power, a motor operated disconnect switch, batteries, a battery charger, and a high voltage breaker with relays for protection. This was to be used in support of the utility’s transmission capital projects and to provide emergency VAR support during unplanned equipment outages.

To learn more, download the full news release which highlights additional details on the mobile capacitor bank solution and how it has helped the utility in their reliability and resiliency initiatives.

Salt River Project (SRP), one of America’s largest public power utilities, has been utilizing Southern States’ CapSwitcher® solution to help maintain their initiative to meet the changing needs and expectations of its customers. This new strategy is centered around SRP’s dedication to becoming “leaner, greener and more customer centric.”

SRP’s professional electrical engineer, Andy Keels, discussed how the CapSwitcher® improves cost-effectiveness, reduces inrush current, optimizes power quality, and successfully addresses a noise concern from a neighborhood near an SRP substation. The full news release explains that in order to maintain growth and achieve the goal of adding an additional 1 GW of utility-scale solar power to their grid by 2025, Salt River Project will continue to rely on the CapSwitcher® solution.

Southern States is pleased to announce that the Tertiary RLSwitcher® was selected by NV Energy, headquartered in Las Vegas, as part of their initiative to double reliance on renewable energy by 2023. NV Energy is responsible for over 44 million consumers within Nevada and relies heavily on the use of shunt reactors to provide quality power to its customers

To support their timeline, NV Energy selected the RLSwitcher® for two of its 34.5 kV shunt reactors, which, as explained in the full news release, required constant in and out switching, leading to early circuit switcher failures. Unlike traditional switches, the RLSwitcher® is designed specifically for switching shunt reactors, minimizing harmful re-ignitions that cause failures and improving overall reliability for the utility.