The meeting was held on Tuesday, April 29, 2003.  15 members and guests attended.

Attendance:

Minutes:

Since the Chairman and V-Chairman of the Group were absent Chris Grodzinski prepared and chaired the meeting.

Technical Items:

A draft of the Data Communication portion of a guide was distributed to the participants and the following note was made:

                The guide should include a list of all available protocols as advise for pick up.

The following technical items were discussed and, in the opinion of the participants, they should be included in the guide:

·         installation conditions of the fiber

·         pulling tensions

·         fiber size

·         fiber characteristics or spec as a minimum acceptable

·         fiber commissioning tests description and minimum acceptable OTDR values

·         fiber selection guide for the temperature measurement purposes

·         since the distributed temperature measurement based on optical fiber as a sensor depends on sensor maximum power losses (total attenuation) a fiber losses budget should be in the guide

John Downes volunteered to prepare a fiber spec/characteristics guide for DTS purpose.

The participants agreed that the guide should be posted on the ICC web site in “dirty” form and opinions of the members should be prepared, as per IEEE guidelines. The guide posting should be done not later than mid July.

Shan Nandi is going to prepare information (guide) about ICC web page and its maintenance. If posting on a web page is not possible the “dirty” parts of the guide should be sent to participants for their opinion.

In the group opinion the guide preparation does not proceed, as it should. The role of the V-Chair should be discussed and redefined. The participants expressed also their opinion that more direction form the group Chairman is necessary.

The group member list was updated by participants.

The group decided to nominate Mr. Chris Grodzinski as a new vice-chair.  Mr. Swapan K. Dey, the previous vice-chair, is currently not available to pursue this task.  It was decided to go ahead and prepare the necessary documents for the change of status from discussion group to working group for the next meeting in Montreal.  We have now, posted on the ICC web, some documents that will constitute part of the intended guide, namely:

• Bibliography by Tony Ernst, USI

• Thermal monitoring systems by Mohamed Chaaban, IREQ, Hydro-Quebec

• Dynamic rating systems by Rusty Bascom, Power Delivery Consultant,

• Data communication by Chris Grodzinski, EHV Power corp.

• User interface by Jean-Marie Braun, Kinectrics.

Another contribution on Thermal monitoring was handed in by Mr. John Downes that will be integrated into the original document.  Mr. John Cooper agreed to elaborate the section on Bibliography.  He will also give a helping hand to Mr. Rusty Bascom in finalizing the Dynamic Rating section.  Mr. Pierre Argaut will produce an additional document on User-Interface with European perspectives.

At the end of the meeting, Mr. Allen MacPhail gave a short presentation on the most recent cable installation at BC Hydro that is being monitored and dynamically rated by DTS.  Mr. John T. Nierenberg from Seattle City Light presented a proposal to form a new discussion group on hot spot mitigation.