Asset Management Techniques Using Smart Grid Sensors

Presented by: Kevin Corcoran, Director - Product Line Management

Tollgrade Communications

© 2014 Tollgrade Communications, Inc.

Asset Management Monitoring

$49B Cumulative Global Market Through 2023

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Asset Management Investment Key Drivers Asset Management Objectives: • Maximize asset utilization and lifetime, manage risks • Timely maintenance and upgrades to meet demand and avoid

outages driven by equipment failures Key Drivers: • Reduce catastrophic events • Maximize network performance and increase efficiency • Reduce unplanned and planned outage costs • Reduce truck rolls • Condition-based rather than time-based maintenance • Improved safety

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Smart Grid Sensing Use Cases and Solutions

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Coordination between departments Enabled by insightful data and analytics

Operations

Engineering

Asset Management

Smart Grid Sensor Data & Analytics

North America Use Case Trends

Predictive Maintenance

Substation Monitoring

Cap Bank Monitoring

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Preventative Maintenance Use waveforms to prevent outages and respond to problems: • Vegetation growth • Failing underground cables

– 10 customer complaints of blinks over 2 months 3 troubleman visits, no problem found UG cable subsequently failed, 17 customers affected

– 6 fault current events logged. Could be leveraged to characterize and troubleshoot root cause of complaints

Example of waveforms from failing underground cable

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Preventative Maintenance Multiple fault current events in short period of time - predictors of potential faults and outages: • Animal Contact

– Three 4kA fault current events over 2 weeks at same location – Transformer fuse subsequently blew due to animal contact – 38 customers

interrupted

Example of animal contact at transformer

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Substation Monitoring • Identify & prevent transformer and circuit overloads • Correct phase imbalance • Improve planning with historical load profile data • Eliminate truck rolls to read load at substations • Record fault current events – leading indicators of failure

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Substation Monitoring • Smart grid sensors & data analytics

– Cost-effective alternative to traditional SCADA solutions – Substation transformer loading – Loading per circuit and per phase – Nameplate overload event logging and alarming

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Load Monitoring & Switching • Load Switching – Better Visibility & Confidence

Problem: – Tie points are often smaller gauge conductors without monitoring – Transfer studies needed to determine risk of switching operation – Without monitoring:

• Conservative estimates based on limited data

Solution: – With cost-effective smart grid sensor monitoring & reports:

• Accurate real-time and historical data • Improved confidence in approved switching orders

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Capacitor Bank Issues • Blown fuses go undetected for

months or years • Tremendous O&M expense to

perform periodic inspections • Installing a SCADA enabled

capacitor controller is a large undertaking and expensive

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Capacitor Bank Monitoring

Inductively powered sensors can alert utility in less than an hour when there is a blown fuse – tremendous savings to O&M budget

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Key Considerations to Evaluate Sensors

“From an asset manager’s perspective, this technology will

allow us to know immediately if there is a problem that is

easy to fix or if it is a serious problem that requires capital

investment.” -- Ivano Laboricca, Vice President of Asset Management

Toronto Hydro

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Key Considerations to Evaluate Sensors • Ease of deployment:

– Weight, ease of install with hot stick – Need for pole-mounted equipment, cabling, and 120V secondary power

• How is it powered and maintained: – Inductively, batteries, solar panels? – Remote configuration, firmware upgrades, and administrative

management tools • Communications options:

– Cellular, wireless mesh, 3rd party radios/modems • Data accuracy:

– Does it have a pre-packaged analytics package to filter out false-positives? • Scalability:

– When thousands are deployed, will the architecture of the platform scale? • Ease of integration into SCADA, Historian, and DMS:

– Has the sensor vendor been able to integrate with back-office systems? How long did integration take?

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Thank You! For more information:

Email: kcorcoran@tollgrade.com or visit www.tollgrade.com

Substation Monitoring App Guide Cap Bank Monitoring App Guide Preventative Maintenance Whitepaper

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