Intelligent Operation and Maintenance of Substations Based on Internet of Things (IoT) Technology

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) technology has been extending its applications in the electric power system since the very beginning of the construction of the smart grid in China. Under such a background, this paper first discusses the technical principles and development goals of the IoT for the electric power system, which can also be called the “power grid IoT” in brief. And then, according to the technical principles mentioned above and the common guidance released by the power grid authorities, this paper presents an IoT technology based Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system for substations. The key technologies, functions and applications of the system are described respectively. The design of an extremely long-life and stable wireless temperature sensor is presented in detail. The functions of the SCADA system include substation equipment status monitoring, 3D-visualization, environment monitoring, spare parts location, asset management and so on. The applications of such a system can be regarded as efficient methods for substation intelligent operation and maintenance.