CITY MANAGER AUTHORITY PROCUREMENT AWARDS
ACTION REQUESTED:
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Approve the award of Single Source Procurement 26-092, SEL Equipment, to A Star Electric, Inc. for an amount not to exceed $37,034.00
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DEPARTMENT: Electric Utility
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Groth, Director
BOARD/COMMISSION REVIEW:
N/A
BACKGROUND:
Schweitzer Engineering Labs, Inc. (SEL) designs, manufactures and supports products that the Electric Utility ("Utility") uses in electrical substation and distribution applications such as SEL meters, relays, fault indicators, communications and RTU equipment for protection and control of Utility assets.
The Utility currently has several thousand fault indicators installed in transformers that are used by field personnel to identify the location of faulted cable during an outage event. The Utility has standardized on a fault indicator manufactured by SEL, and has over the last 20 years, installed approximately 4,000 devices in the field.
DISCUSSION:
The Utility standard is to install fault indicators on new transformers as they are put into the field. Recently, a program to replace non-functioning or obsolete indicators on existing equipment has begun and has driven a need to purchase additional fault indicators for the warehouse to distribute to the field crews performing the corrective maintenance work. This request is to supply the work crews and to maintain adequate stock in our warehouse.
The SEL AutoRanger functionality, that the City has been applying for over 20 years, has been included into Utility troubleshooting processes. Intermixing different technologies and different operations could complicate troubleshooting steps and techniques, which in turn would extend power outage duration.
The Utility has identified this purchase as a single source because SEL is the sole manufacturer of these products, which have been in use for the past 20 years. A Star Electric is the only authorized manufacturer's distributor for SEL products. SEL als...
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