When NovaTech was founded twentyfive years ago, it would have never occurred to us that we would experience the growth that we have over the last five years. Not only are we now a combined process control and electric utility automation entity, but NovaTech has achieved a sustained 16% growth rate since the late autumn of 2003, and numbers are on track to extend that growth rate by year’s end.

As if this in-house growth weren’t exciting enough, we are proud to announce that we have re-established our partnership with Bitronics LLC and this means we can provide our electric utility and process customers an even broader range of product offerings. It will also enable us to accelerate new product development and to leverage the electric utility marketing and support for both product lines.

And about the partnership between Bitronics and NovaTech... it’s an interesting story. Back in 2001, Bitronics meters, specified 4-to-1 over the closest competitor, were increasingly being used for more than just local indication of electrical measurements. They were connecting to SCADA networks and to local PLCs to implement distribution automation and control applications in the electric utility substation - an environment of legacy systems and obsoleted and proprietary code you would not wish on your worst enemy.

But there was this outfit in Kansas called NovaTech that did an extraordinary job at tying it all together and making it work. The two organizations combined provided electric utility customers with a measurement front-end with a Mean Time Between Failure of 40 years and open architecture automation and control solutions that integrated with nearly any pre-existing hardware.

Bitronics was also inventing a new category of substation-hardened multifunction measurement and event capture device (today called the 70 Series) that pushed the envelope of distributed analysis and high-speed control. The modular M871, as it is known today, provides a utility or plant engineer with a suite of distributed measurement, event capture, and energy management functions in a single unit. It was this technology, along with Bitronics’ strong reputation in the marketplace, which made it attractive to a French conglomerate in 2003. NovaTech continued to grow and expand its automation and control services by acquiring the D/3® DCS and its process automation customers in 2003.

As of July 1, 2008 the two organizations - NovaTech and Bitronics - are reunited. Synergies of measurement, control, and protocol emulation allowed Bitronics and NovaTech to redefine the utility substation. This reunion will provide process customers seeking to study and optimize their plant’s energy consumption with the most reliable measurement, power quality, and event analysis front-end on the market.