Mehta Tech
Disturbance Monitoring with Foresight and Precision

Power grids today face unprecedented scrutiny. As regulatory requirements intensify and system complexities multiply, utilities must detect, interpret, and report every electrical disturbance with absolute precision. Against this backdrop, accurate, time-aligned data is essential for compliance and operational confidence.

Since its inception in 1983, Mehta Tech, based in Iowa, has delivered reliable, highly engineered solutions to meet this challenge head-on. The company specializes in disturbance monitoring, helping utilities capture what happens inside substations during unexpected events. Often described as the “black box” of substations, its systems provide a continuous, forensic record of grid behavior that utilities can rely on when investigating faults or proving compliance.

This engineering focus underpins every aspect of the company’s operations. All products are designed, built, and supported in the U.S., including the printed circuit boards. Unlike larger vendors that stretch across multiple product categories, Mehta Tech’s strength lies in delivering depth in disturbance monitoring with clear insights during the grid’s most critical moments. This narrow focus allows the team to refine their technology continuously, producing systems tailored to real-world conditions rather than generalized solutions.

Data Integrity at the Heart of Every System

At the core of Mehta Tech’s portfolio is the TRANSCAN platform, which combines three functions in one: digital fault recording, phasor measurement, and dynamic disturbance recording. It monitors voltages, currents, frequencies, and power quality with high-speed sampling, providing detailed information to capture subtle anomalies that might otherwise be missed. Executives liken this to recording a movie rather than taking a snapshot, giving utilities a frame-by-frame view of events as they unfold. Crucially, this recording does not pause during an event, giving utilities complete visibility before, during, and after disturbances.

One of TRANSCAN’s defining features is its time accuracy across multiple devices. For utilities managing hundreds of assets, synchronized timing is essential to understanding cause and effect across the grid.

“If you have 200 devices in your networks, you shouldn’t have 200 different timestamps when an event occurs. We give our customers a unified, accurate picture of exactly what happened and when,” says Dan Harder, Director of Sales and Business Development.

We’ve been providing equipment for the last eight to ten years that’s capable of meeting the standards that went into enforcement earlier this year

The platform also extends monitoring beyond protective devices, capturing voltage inrushes, current reversals, and other dynamics often hidden from conventional systems. The effectiveness of this design is evident in real-world utility applications. In one case, a utility faced repeated equipment failures that standard troubleshooting could not resolve. Mehta Tech’s data revealed upstream load switching as the culprit. Company President Tony Ranson personally traveled to the site, spending three days on location to restore service. This is just a small sample of the service ethic, which is central to the company’s culture.

Such experiences form part of Mehta Tech’s institutional knowledge. Over time, its systems have repeatedly uncovered patterns that were invisible in real-time but critical for preventing future incidents. This ability to provide a continuous “black box” record has become equally valuable for long-term planning and system upgrades.

Foresight in an Era of Continually Evolving Regulations

The surge in monitoring investment across the utility sector is primarily driven by compliance frameworks such as FERC Order 901 and NERC standards PRC-002-5 and PRC-028-1. These mandates define what data must be captured, how long it must be retained, and how precisely it must be timestamped. Meeting these standards can be costly, especially for operators managing multiple substations across broad service areas.

Recognizing these regulatory shifts early, Mehta Tech built features like phasor data streaming (IEEE C37.118) for synchrophasors and multi-format COMTRADE support for universal file sharing into its platform more than a decade ago. This foresight enables customers to remain compliant without the need for frequent hardware overhauls or disruptive retrofits.

“We’ve been providing equipment for the last eight to ten years that’s capable of meeting the standards that went into enforcement earlier this year,” says Ranson.

This planning is reinforced by active industry involvement. Mehta Tech participates in IEEE and councils such as the Transient Recording Users Council (TRUC) and the Organization of Machine Automation and Control (OMAC), using these forums to stay attuned to emerging discussions and anticipate changes well before they become formal mandates. Its software suite, including TRANSCAN Master Station and DFR+, simplifies configuration, record management, and audit response, reducing the administrative burden on utilities. By anticipating standards before they emerge, Mehta Tech helps customers stay compliant, but in practice, often equips them with insights that go well beyond regulatory needs.

In one instance, minor alarms were recorded weeks before an equipment failure. These were initially dismissed as nuisance signals, but were later recognized as early indicators of a failing component. This detailed information allows utilities to meet reporting requirements and understand failure patterns to prevent similar issues in the future. The combination of compliance and operational foresight has emerged as a recurring theme in Mehta Tech deployments.

Bringing Specialized Expertise to More Utilities

Specialization has not limited Mehta Tech’s reach. Its systems are deployed at more than 2,000 substations across the United States, Canada, and select international markets, covering environments ranging from transmission and distribution substations to power plants and industrial facilities, demonstrating flexibility across nearly every segment of the grid. To serve this footprint more effectively, the company is expanding its network of local representatives to facilitate faster responses and closer customer engagement.

Product development follows a deliberate roadmap of improving user experience, expanding configuration flexibility, and deepening analytics capabilities in step with regulatory and operational trends. This evolution also preserves backward compatibility, ensuring that existing systems can be upgraded without major overhauls. The TRANSCAN has remained a versatile platform for decades: customers can easily make upgrades rather than replacing entire systems, a cost-saving advantage for utilities managing legacy assets.

Karla Ostroski, Inside Sales Coordinator and a 30-year company veteran, highlights this approach as core to the company’s culture. Mehta Tech pre-tests and configures every product to the customer’s specifications so it arrives on site ready to go.

For operators of critical infrastructure, that level of preparation minimizes installation errors and shortens commissioning, which ultimately boosts reliability. This commitment to readiness extends into Mehta Tech’s forward view, where it anticipates how industry demands and regulations will continue to change. The company is also preparing for broader industry shifts, such as integrating distributed energy resources and so that utilities can navigate these changes with the same level of confidence. Rather than viewing these shifts as challenges, Mehta Tech treats them as opportunities to refine its technology and reinforce its role as a trusted partner in an increasingly complex energy landscape.

As the grid grows smarter and more demanding, Mehta Tech stands ready to meet its next chapter with foresight and precision. More than a recorder of disturbances, it has become the grid’s trusted partner — empowering utilities to turn every event into insight and every insight into a stronger, more reliable energy future, even as new technologies and regulatory demands continue to emerge.