Massachusetts

Working at the Cabot hydroelectric generating station, owned by FirstLight Power Resources, TRC completed engineering services to replace the entire plant’s protective relay equipment.

Between October 2018 and June 2019, our electrical engineers replaced the original existing electromechanical protective relays with state-of-the-art Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL) microprocessor relays.  The relay replacements covered the hydro station’s six generators (including stator ground protection), two station buses, generator step-up transformer and the station service transformer.

We provided all the necessary design drawings to complete the project at the facility and provided protective relay settings and proper relay coordination for all the new relays that were installed, including detailed setting basis documents, relay setting calculations, and relay setting file development.

As a result, the station’s aging electromechanical relays was upgraded with modern digital protection relays, increasing flexibility, security and reliability, while reducing required maintenance activities.

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Our practitioners share their insights and perspectives on the trends and challenges shaping the market.

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Videos

Webinar Replay: Substation Automation – Best Practices for IEC 61850 Implementation

March 29, 2022

Modernizing utility equipment, standards and processes pays dividends for improved safety, security and reliability. But transitioning to a new high-tech system model can be challenging.

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Insights

The Best Process for Transforming Thermal Generation Power Plants

February 9, 2022

Faced with an aging fleet, stricter environmental regulations, reduced costs for natural gas and competition from renewables, more than 600 power plants have been decommissioned in the last 20 years, a pace that will increase with the announced closure of nearly 350 additional plants by 2025.

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Insights

Amplifying the Next Phase of Fleet Electrification: The Pickup

September 30, 2021

TRC’s analysis for one client fleet shows that even a $70,000 EV can compete on cost with a comparable gas-hybrid vehicle priced at $40,000 – at least in California where upfront and ongoing incentives stack up quickly.

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News

TRC Acquires Montreal’s Quatric, Expanding Digital Capabilities for Utilities

June 16, 2021

Today, TRC announced the expansion of its digital capabilities with the acquisition of Quatric, a Montreal, QC and Quincy, MA-based firm that provides engineering services and technology solutions to electric and gas utilities.

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News

TRC Ranked No. 20 on Annual List of Top U.S. Design Firms

May 9, 2021

TRC has once again been named one of the top engineering firms in the country by Engineering News-Record, finishing No. 20 on the publication’s annual list of the Top 500 design firms.

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News

TRC Companies Welcomes New Power Sector President Ed Myszka

September 2, 2020

Myszka brings over 30 years of innovation, market development and operations experience to TRC.

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Insights

Microgrids: A mega-opportunity for electric utilities

June 2, 2020

For the traditional electric utility business model, microgrids could be perceived as a financial threat. But we see many ways microgrids can be both moneymakers and cost-savers for utilities.

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News

MCE Announces Partner for Comprehensive Energy Storage Program

May 12, 2020

TRC will help support MCE’s community and vulnerable customer resiliency efforts

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Insights

Energy Efficiency as a Resource in Southern California

March 19, 2020

EE as a Resource programs that provide capacity and energy savings to the grid must be dependable and persistent to replace essential power plant capacity.

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Insights

Resilient, Distributed Energy as a Vital Public Service

February 26, 2020

Implementing resilient solutions for many means ensuring power supply to critical facilities, emergency response efforts and local authorities during power outages.

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Insights

Why TRC is Teaming Up with Opus One Solutions

June 13, 2019

TRC is partnering with Opus One Solutions to help utilities to seamlessly plan, build and manage the grid of tomorrow.

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Regulatory Updates

NERC Addresses Single Points of Failure in Protection Systems Among Other FERC Concerns

October 25, 2018

In a world where energy supply and consumption are becoming increasingly dynamic and complex, energy providers are still expected to maintain a standard of safe, reliable and resilient power delivery. Distributed energy resources (DERs) – small-scale units of local generation connected to the grid at the distribution level that often include battery storage, electric vehicles (EVs), EV charging stations and residential solar – and associated business models are proliferating at a staggering rate. Traditional utility customers are transitioning from interacting with consumers to networking with prosumers, and utilities are facing pressure to become more sophisticated as policymakers push to shrink carbon footprints. Under this lens, traditional utility planning tools are insufficient. These tools have not fully embraced the potential or the expansion of DERs within power networks, where the increased penetration of DERs has the capability to wreak havoc on grid resiliency. Whether it be photovoltaic  plus battery storage or EVs and fleet charging, it is imperative to be able to assess the locational impact of each resource in a timely manner. Traditional planning tools leverage a brute force method, requiring a significant amount of an engineering time to conduct one-off studies. But dynamic network tools that quickly model parallel simulations become a necessity to validate load flow calculations and understand the dynamic hosting capacity on areas of the network. Planning tools need to become more automated and integrate better with the utility’s back office systems to help reduce the time required to conduct an engineering analysis. For certain utilities, using traditional tools to validate the network model and load flow calculations could require four to six hours per circuit, and in some cases more than 20 hours. Multiply that by 1,000 circuits – as well as adding in the complexity of optimization-based problems such as DER location, storage dispatch and hosting capacity – and utilities are faced with a significant amount of time required just to conduct the studies, let alone being able to use the results.

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News

TRC Expands Presence in Power Market with Acquisition of Ohio-based IJUS

October 1, 2018

LOWELL, Mass. – TRC, a leading provider of end-to-end engineering, consulting and construction management solutions fueled by innovative technology, announced today it has acquired IJUS, a top power/utility engineering firm based in Gahanna, Ohio. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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Insights

TRC and partners win $1 million grant for engineering innovative New York microgrid

April 20, 2017

TRC is proud to support Huntington, NY bolster power reliability and climate-change resiliency with a sophisticated new “community microgrid’’ combining solar energy, a fuel cell, biogas and traditional natural gas to deliver electricity and heat to local customers and institutions.

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News

TRC Acquires Utility Support Systems, Inc.

July 22, 2013

TRC Companies has acquired Georgia-based Utility Support Systems, Inc. , a professional engineering company primarily supporting the power/utility market.

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Download Whitepaper: 10 Years of Insights for Clean Community Microgrids

March 1, 2023

Clean, community microgrids represent a promising and timely opportunity for you to advance your customer offering and deliver meaningful societal benefits, all while modernizing your grid and providing you with load flexibility.

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Videos

TRC ENERGY TALKS PODCAST

September 6, 2022

Produced and hosted by the staff of TRC’s Advanced Energy practice, the podcasts are a forum for current trends in the energy industry.

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Insights

Start Your Batteries: Mass Fleet Electrification is Coming (And What We Can do to Prepare)

April 13, 2022

As we plan for and make early investments for fleets, we’ll be paving the way for higher degrees of market penetration of passenger vehicles and other modes of transportation as well.

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Insights

Ensuring a Just Transition: Optimizing Opportunities for All in the Low-Carbon Future

January 24, 2022

Carbon elimination of the magnitude needed to address climate change requires systems-level change that can only be reached by incremental, ground-up progress, building upon what we have achieved thus far.

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Insights

10 Takeaways from the COP26 Climate Meeting

November 17, 2021

There are compelling reasons to be optimistic about the outcomes of the COP26 meeting. Notably, agreement among all nations that more needs to be done, by both private and governmental bodies, to contain and mitigate climate change.

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Insights

Amplifying the Next Phase of Fleet Electrification: The Pickup

September 30, 2021

TRC’s analysis for one client fleet shows that even a $70,000 EV can compete on cost with a comparable gas-hybrid vehicle priced at $40,000 – at least in California where upfront and ongoing incentives stack up quickly.

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News

TRC Acquires New Jersey’s Clean Energy Program Contract and Assumes Program Administrator Role

January 17, 2021

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ and LOWELL, MA. – Jan. 17, 2017 – TRC Companies Inc., a recognized leader in engineering, environmental consulting and construction-management services, today announced it has acquired the contract to serve as Program Administrator of New Jersey’s Clean Energy Program™ (NJCEP), which has provided more than $300 million annually in support to homeowners, businesses…