Proposed Practical Communication Architecture for Automatic Fault Detection and Clearance in Secondary Distribution Power Network

Abstract

A versatile yet secure communication architecture is important for smart grid (SG) applications. Most developing countries are currently deploying communication infrastructure for SG implementation. Survey in literature shows automated protection and control is already done in generation, transmission and primary distribution parts of the grid so as to guarantee reliable power supply to customers. However, secondary distribution power network (SDPN) is usually not monitored. Most of the published studies dealing with communication architectures in SDPN have focused on providing solutions for home automations and smart metering applications but little attention is paid to actual power utilities’ needs and implementation challenges facing power utilities specifically when detecting and clearing faults automatically in SDPN. Most power utility companies in developing countries and Tanzania in particular face a lot of challenges when dealing with faults management in the SDPN. This is due to poorly planned and unmonitored low voltage infrastructure. In this paper, practical requirements for SDPN communication architectures are established through challenge driven education (CDE) approach and thereafter, a practical communication architecture appropriate for Tanzania Electric Supply Company Limited (TANESCO) to enable automatic and real time faults detection and clearance in SDPN is proposed. Simulation results show that the developed architecture can successfully be used to practically detect and clear faults at SDPN since it introduces an overall end to end average delay of 1.362ms which is lower than what is specified by SG application standard delay time for distribution automation (100ms).