SES’s commitment to pioneering R&D work while improving and expanding our software continues unabated. This year’s investment in R&D and software development has accelerated our scientific progress, and this momentum will continue. I’m excited to share some of our achievements from the past year—thanks to the tireless efforts of our team, SES’s programs are now faster, more flexible, better connected, and more accurate than ever before.

Amongst our core modules, the SESResap interface can now directly import soil resistivity data from an SES standard format spreadsheet that can be used in the field. There has been substantial reduction in the time needed to calculate the current distribution in MALZ and HIFREQ conductor networks, with computation times less than a tenth of those of previous versions. We have added the current recovery feature for models with Finite Volumes in MALT and MALZ, and the latter can now run with unassigned energization buses as well as with Working Potentials or EMFs exclusively, while allowing virtual connections. Meanwhile, on the circuit modeling side, FCDIST files can now be edited in SESCircuitSimulator. SESAmpacityBM, which computes accurately the temperature rise of bimetallic conductors with non-linear characteristics, now has a full interface.

Our file editors, import and inspection tools are also under active development and continue to evolve. SESCAD now has a new high‑level path object, regrouping conductors that form a continuously connected electrical path, and now has a dedicated tool to efficiently insert gaps in conductor networks. In the meantime, the development of the new SESCAD first unveiled last year continues.

SESLibrary has not only expanded its existing databases but also added new databases including, electrical resistivities and permittivities, electric strengths, and native potentials for diverse materials. New structures can be imported from SESLibrary into SESCAD, and native potentials of various materials can be exported to CorrCAD and SESCPCalculator. Our powerful CAD editor SESConverter now allows converting plates to 3DFace entities in a dxf file, and the entity type can vary between layers. SESTextEditor has seen the seamless integration of SESBatch to run cases, even concurrent computations, and provides the capability of viewing the outputs and results generated via the top menu or shortcut keys.

Continuing the thread of presenting results, the Safety Table feature, a staple of the legacy safety screen, has been brought to the modern SESThreshold by popular demand. The SESSystemViewer 3D plotting program now provides greater flexibility with respect to the selection of cable components for which results should be displayed, and you now have much finer control over the lighting used to display the plot. SESPlotViewer is now outfitted with data processing tools reducing the need for external applications, and the new 2D‑distance plot makes it particularly convenient to work with exported data sets from SESResultsViewer.

Our specialized packages have also continued to grow and evolve. For AC interference studies, RowCAD now has interfaces for the Modify Circuit, Monitor Fault, and Total Interference interfaces directly accessible in the main RowCAD interface, and SESTLC can now consider the voltage level of transmission lines to account for capacitive coupling between transmission lines and exposed lines. In SESTrainSimulator, it is now possible to create envelope plots of the maximum, minimum, average and RMS results for conductor‑related quantities such as current, GPR or coating stress, and many more, along with more developed filtering options. Finally train motion data is now accessible in the user interface.

Moving beyond 50 and 60 Hz, on the low frequency side, the three DC corrosion programs, CorrCAD, SESCurvefitDigitizer and SESCPCalculator, have been upgraded to a 64‑bit platform allowing larger cases to process faster and shake off old memory limitations. CorrCAD has enhanced polyline operations, now provides an electric field display, and the new plot module provides different plot rendering options. On the high frequency side, SESTransient now boasts a frequency‑dependent conductor and plate subdivision algorithm, reducing computation time while fully maintaining high accuracy. SESTransient has better support for power cable results filtering, includes a new type of lightning surge based on the IEC‑62305, and is now compatible with multi‑region soils. In lightning shielding, SESShield‑2D has seen a complete overhaul of the substation module, more features in the phase conductor table, and the transmission line viewer was redesigned.

You will see in this newsletter, examples of progress made on new powerful solutions, such as a version of the multi‑region soil model accounting for region boundaries as well as incorporating finite volumes in multi‑region soils.

Finally, let me underline SES’s enduring gratitude to our legion of loyal users, who have renewed technical support from SES, year after year, thus keeping SES in touch with your needs and financially sustaining the R&D that goes into delivering to you the world’s most advanced system grounding, lightning and electromagnetic compatibility software, along with technical support from internationally recognized experts, whose priority it is to help you when you need them.