Improve Reliability, Reduce Capital Costs and Enhance Safety
A practical system delivering cost-effective results
Advanced system functions:
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- Voltage Monitoring and Alarm
- Outage Monitoring
- Power Quality Monitoring and Alarm
- Reliability Assessment
- System Performance Analysis
- Loss Analysis
- Regulatory Reporting
The advantage of remote monitoring
For over 25 years, SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) has been used by large urban utilities to provide efficient load and voltage monitoring, outage assessment, and power quality assessment. Despite the availability of advanced technology, many rural system owners have remained unable to justify implementation of this valuable technology, due to the prohibitive costs of metering current transformers, communications infrastructures and acquiring expensive RTU hardware. As a result, rural distribution companies often lack even the fundamental ability to determine whether or not a customer has power.
A cost-effective solution for rural stations
Kinectrics developed the Smart Distribution Monitoring System to effectively resolve these issues without the need to purchase extremely expensive components. This innovative rural SCADA system is a complete pre-engineered package featuring low cost RTUs, Web communications, inexpensive current transformers and customer outage monitors.
The Smart Distribution Monitoring System Remote Terminal Unit (RTU) designed by Kinectrics provides accurate monitoring of substation voltages, feeder phase currents and powers, and total harmonic distortion. Data is stored and pre-analyzed in the RTU, then automatically transmitted from the station RTU back to a host computer on a periodic basis.
A user-selected communication system can be used for this link, i.e. landline, cell phone, radio or satellite for more remote stations. Alarms triggered on high/low voltage and current, and high harmonic distortion are relayed immediately to the host. The host computer stores the information in a database and prepares engineering or management output reports, on user-friendly readily accessible Web pages. Additional options can be added using a building-block approach.
The Smart Distribution Monitoring System reduces the high cost of current transformers (CT) insulated for high voltages that are typically used in SCADA systems, by using low cost CTs and existing insulation systems where possible. Flexible core CTs can be placed around the bushing of a recloser or feeder egress cable without requiring an outage.
The Smart Distribution Monitoring System can also use a small number of standard outage detectors installed on customers’ circuits to identify an outage location. This information is relayed to the central display software to expedite repair crew dispatch. The number and duration of outages are automatically logged in the database.
The Smart Distribution Monitoring System can also use a small number of standard outage detectors installed on customers’ circuits to identify an outage location. This information is relayed to the central display software to expedite repair crew dispatch. The number and duration of outages are automatically logged in the database.
The Web-browser user interface, developed by Kinectrics, allows ready access of processed data and summary reports on the Internet or on the utility Intranet. Summary reports provide information in formats that can be used to support management decisions, without additional processing. Detailed engineering investigation results, raw spreadsheet data, and captured 60 Hz waveforms can be downloaded.
For more information, contact
Stephen Cress, 416.207.6557, steve.cress@kinectrics.com
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