Enhancing Faults Monitoring in Secondary Electrical Distribution Network
Inefficient fault management in electrical Secondary Distribution Network (SDN) is one of the major challenges facing most power utility companies around the world including Tanzania. Currently, faults management processes from detection to clearance are
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Abstract. Inefficient fault management in electrical Secondary Distribution Network (SDN) is one of the major challenges facing most power utility companies around the world including Tanzania. Currently, faults management processes from detection to clearance are done manually due to the lack of visibility in SDN resulting to long Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) and high operational costs. Advancements in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and sensing technologies have made it possible to have cost effective electrical power network visibility solutions. This study proposes algorithms that enhance fault detection and monitoring in the Tanzania SDN based on distributed processing architecture. The proposed algorithms include sensing and data acquisition, fault detection, localization and visualization. The algorithms were deployed and tested on live network at University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), Kijitonyama Campus. Keywords: Fault detection Fault clearance Distributed processing Secondary distribution network Remote sensing unit Monitoring Visibility Algorithms Distributed architecture
1 Introduction Electrical power Secondary Distribution Network (SDN) provides last mile connectivity to the end customers [1]. Its primary task is to ensure a secure and efficient energy delivery to consumers [2]. For this to be possible, power from generation sites is transmitted to the primary substation through the transmission network and delivered to the secondary distribution network through Medium Voltage (MV)/Low Voltage (LV) transformers [3]. Most power utilities maintain the emergency desk to ensure supply continuity and customer safety hence guarantee the quality of service. In Tanzania, the electrical SDN is under Tanzania Electric Supply Company Limited (TANESCO). Defects and faults are reported by customers to the TANESCO’s emergency desk and through visual inspection (line patrol) which are time consuming and inefficient [4]. The delays in fault clearance are mainly attributed by the lack of efficient and automated systems which continuously monitor the electrical SDN parameters so as to detect, report, classify and locate faults whenever they occur. Ineffective faults clearance mechanisms employed by the utility company have been the major cause of inefficient power supply © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2019 Published by Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 P. Nielsen and H. C. Kimaro (Eds.): ICT4D 2019, IFIP AICT 551, pp. 712–723, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18400-1_58
Enhancing Faults Monitoring in Secondary Electrical Distribution Network
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in Tanzania resulting to increased complaints from customers and significant losses of revenue to both customers and utility. There have been utility company initiatives to automate fault monitoring and detection in transmission and primary distribution parts of the electrical network using Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and Distribution Management System (DMS), which are largely centralized [5, 6].
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