Glossary
Substation Technician Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential substation technician terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key substation technician vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in substation technician training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Arc flash
- An explosive electrical release.
- Bus
- Conductors that connect equipment.
- Circuit breaker
- Interrupts fault current.
- Clearance
- Permission to work on de-energized equipment.
- Commissioning
- Testing new equipment before service.
- CT
- Current transformer.
- Dissolved gas analysis
- Oil testing for transformer health.
- Grounding
- Connecting equipment to earth for safety.
- Megger
- An insulation resistance tester.
- One-line diagram
- A simplified system drawing.
- Protective relay
- Detects faults and trips breakers.
- PT
- Potential transformer.
- SCADA
- Remote monitoring and control.
- Substation
- A facility that switches and transforms power.
- Transformer
- Changes voltage levels.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Substation Technician practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Substation Technician training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.