2007-03-26 - This year’s Transmission and Distribution Europe conference was held in Prague, where the conference attendants gathered in March to listen to current topics on energy distribution. The conference participants were mainly senior management people from power utilities. The session topics covered power quality, asset management, information management, security of supply, etc.
The ABB internet café presented information on distribution protection and control IEDs, ABB network management systems i.e. MicroSCADA Pro and Network Manager. Together with ABB Power Systems, Distribution Automation was the main sponsor of the event.
Matti Kärenlampi, Product Manager for DMS 600, from Substation Automation Products, presented the latest findings in a Finnish project in the field of automatic meter reading. The focus of the project was on LV network management and outage reporting. Marina Ohrn, Marketing Manager of ABB Network Management talked about "SCADA as an integrated component in the utilities business" in her presentation.
Low Voltage Distribution Network Management Using Advanced AMR System Data
When investing in Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) systems, the utilities should take advantage of all the opportunities offered by automatic meter reading. The principal argument for AMR has been cost reduction and customer service. In addition, AMR includes, for example, real-time energy information, demand side management, reconnection of electricity, determination of load profiles for network calculation and planning, secondary transformer condition monitoring, accurate interruption statistics, sophisticated power quality monitoring facilities, and low voltage (LV) distribution network management.
The focus of the presentation was on LV network management and outage reporting. Many of the existing meters already record interruption times for customers. Communication systems primarily intended for energy data transfer allow these interruption times to be transferred to a SCADA/DMS environment. The DMS system supports recording and reporting of LV interruptions. The reporting system still has to classify interruptions according to fault reasons, etc, but the times recorded from customer energy meters can be used to verify reported interruption times.
An enhanced energy meter also works as an intelligent monitoring device, utilizing the AMR communication infrastructure to provide network control centers with vital information on LV network faults and voltage levels. The best results are received when spontaneous event or alarm information can be acquired from the energy meters. There are also communication features useful in rural areas (e.g. GPRS), but the huge number of devices makes it necessary to carefully plan the kind of events to be sent from the meters and how to configure the meters. Without limitations and configuration options the number of events would exceed the capacity of practically any communication media.
When event data from meters are combined with a topological network model in the DMS, the original cause of a fault or the faulted component can be located. This means considerable benefits for the LV network management as, for example, blown fuses, broken conductors and voltage problems can be presented to the operators practically as real-time information.
In co-operation with other companies and Tampere University of Technology, ABB has started a joint R&D project to define advanced meter functionality and interfaces to SCADA/DMS systems. The consortium includes a group of equipment and system vendors plus a pilot distribution company. The presentation of this project described the functionality developed, the benefits for LV network management, and the first results from the pilot installation.