Virginia Power



Company name:	Virginia Power
Contact:	Vance W. Petree
Phone:	(804) 257-4612
Fax:	(804) 257-4750
E-Mail:	vwp@vancpower.com

Virginia Power is an electric utility serving the Central Virginia and northeastern North Carolina areas; we have about 2 million customers. Our Operations Engineering group develops and supports a wide variety of software, all using and running under Linux:

1. A distributed network of data gathering systems, in continuous operation since late 1993.
2. An internal database / web server which provides interactive historical data retrieval, report generation, and data plotting. One-line substation schematic diagrams and CAD drawings are also available.
3. A substation controller which serves as a data concentrator, continuously monitoring fault detecting relays, PLC networks, and transformer protection units.

We are also designing and building a distributed SCADA system which will run on a mixture of Intel and Alpha systems connected via a dedicated high-speed wide area network, and will replace five separate PDP systems which have been in operation for years.



Virginia Power uses Linux for the following functions:

• X-Windows:
  • X-Windows terminal (display, keyboard, mouse -- applications run elsewhere)
  • X-Windows server (runs applications, possibly exports display)
• Network file server:
  • NFS server for other PCs and Unix systems.
• Print server:
  • Print spooler using lpd (Unix, NFS clients)
• Office productivity software:
  • Document preparation with TeX, LaTeX and derivatives.
  • Graphics prepared with TGIF.
  • Other document management.
• Internet client software - WWW
  • NetScape Navigator.
  • NCSA Mosaic.
  • Lynx.
• Internet client software - mail
  • Elm.
  • Netscape's mail client.
• Network management:
  • NIS server.
• Electronic mail server:
  • SMTP mail router.
• Network services provided to local users:
  • HTTP (World-Wide Web) server or cache.
  • ``Regular'' (user-ID and password required) ftp server.
  • Anonymous ftp server.
  • Accepts telnet connections.
  • Runs one or more database servers.
  • Other services.
• Software development tools:
  • C and/or C++
  • Java
  • Perl
  • Tcl/Tk
  • Bourne, Korn, C or another shell; using sed, awk, grep and similar tools.
  • Others.

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