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Schweitzer discusses SEL expansions, advancements at chamber luncheon

Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories's latest technologies are vastly outperforming that of its competitors, founder and President Edmund Schweitzer III said during a Pullman Chamber of Commerce general membership luncheon Tuesday at SEL's event center.

During a presentation, Schweitzer, who is also the chairman of the board and chief technology officer for SEL, described progress the company has made during the past year, including the expansion of its campus with its new Zocholl 2 building.

"This doubles our research and development space," Schweitzer said. "We designed it ourselves, working with local subcontractors that managed the construction."

Schweitzer said the next step will be building a small footbridge between it and the campus. The bridge will feature supports designed to look like pylons from an electric grid.

Schweitzer also spoke about other advances at SEL, like technology that allows it to detect and account for electric faults earlier so they can be tracked down with a greater degree of accuracy.

Schweitzer said the company's new products, already in service in power grids around the globe, can detect and react to a fault in under 2 milliseconds, eight times faster than older devices.

"That's moving from a car to a jet in speed," Schweitzer said. "Of course this means less disturbances, less damage - it's better safety, fewer fires, all kinds of advantages."

Schweitzer said SEL invented a new device called a fault transmitter that can be attached to existing lines to detect irregularities and then transmit the location where they occurred. He said this is helpful when attempting to repair vast stretches of power lines.

With this new technology, Schweitzer said, SEL has been able to observe electrical activity with such accuracy that workers can identify minute disturbances before they become faults.

"It's a whole new ballgame," Schweitzer said.

As an example of this progress, Schweitzer presented the work SEL has done with the republic of Georgia, on the southwestern border of Russia. Schweitzer said before doing business with SEL, Georgia used to see eight to 14 partial blackouts a year and two to five total blackouts of the small country's entire grid.

"The republic of Georgia has not had a blackout in three years - literally the difference between night and day," Schweitzer said.

Schweitzer said in some areas, authorities are using the new gear in tandem with the old to measure the disparity, but so far SEL has left competitors in the dust.

"Which would you want, the car or the jet?" Schweitzer asked. "You can't get them back on the farm after they see the lights of the city."