SAN Electro Heat - Blue Point

The Blue Point Switch Heating control and Third Rail Heating Control system is a completely autonomous system that utilizes weather sensors, rail sensors and predictive services to control the rail heat autonomously.

This “Man Out of the Loop” rail heating system is best utilized through a secure cloud service that ties in automated alarms via email, text and on-call service personnel. The system can be configured to operate internally to the railroad or transit agency but some of the alarming, diagnostics and trending services will be forfeited as well as the hosting and licensing of hardware, software and database.

The Blue Point Switch Heating system utilizes a Pulse Width Modulated (PWM) heating scheme that allows dual element heat. The PWM will nominally apply energy efficient heat to the switch points but if the weather detection and/or predictive services dictate extreme weather then the Blue Point system will automatically apply extreme heat – as much as 600 watts/ft through dual elements.

The dual elements utilize the existing heater lines that are currently feeding the switch heaters – a new intelligent junction box replaces the existing junction box and the dual heat is broken out and isolated from the junction box. This allows for dual heat without trenching for new cabling.

In addition to dual heat this also provides a level of redundancy such that each heater is electrically isolated from each other so one heater failure will not propagate to the other.

The Autonomous nature of the Blue Point control system provides worry free operation free from constant monitoring or supervised control. The Blue Point control system’s SCADA system can be accessed for viewing, control and/or configuration directly at the enclosure or through a secure cloud. The customer’s administrator(s) of the Blue Point system will be able to assign varying levels of access to their personnel, from view only to full control & configuration capability.

San Electro Heat has deployed over 600 Blue Point heating systems in Europe and is now exporting this technology to the NIBE Element Railway solutions companies in North America. San is working with Omni Control Technology, located in Whitinsville – MA, to refit the autonomous Blue Point systems for the North American market – this includes production and support of the Blue Point Heating systems.