Abstract
Objectives: Effective substation maintenance management based on low cost and reliable Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) enabled implementation framework. Methods/Statistical Analysis: Economical operation of substation by minimizing the equipment maintenance cost is the prime concern for all the power distribution utilities. Number of maintenance management strategies has been developed for optimizing the substation equipment maintenance cost. Effectiveness of these optimized maintenance strategies lies on the actual implementation in the field. Currently equipment maintenance activities are carried out with off-line association with equipment. Also, equipment maintenance data is acquired and populated manually into host computer which is running maintenance cost optimization applications. Inherently manual process suffers from various drawbacks and results in poor maintenance management. RFID based technology along with embedded system is identified for making the above off-line process into an on-line process with data integrity. Findings: Present paper proposes a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) enabled implementation framework to perform the maintenance with on-line association with equipment. This allows on-line access with the equipment and eliminates the manual process of acquiring data from equipment at the substation level. Also, ensures the on-line update of pre-maintenance and postmaintenance information of equipment in the Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS). Conventional RFID readers which are based on multi-purpose hand-held computers are driven by high level operating systems and programming languages. Due to high level system software on handheld readers, the network latency increases and data refresh rate decreases. This paper proposes a low cost microcontroller based RFID reader with up-stream data interface using low level network programming to address the above issues. Host computer data interface is implemented using a TCP/IP protocol which assures the data integrity. The low level programming at the host computer for network communication minimizes the network latency in the data transfer and improves the data refresh rate. Maintenance process with RFID framework is designed and explained. Application/Improvements: Maintenance management strategies can be implemented effectively using the proposed RFID enabled framework with customized RLU along with low level network interface to CMMS. Present implementation based on Ethernet interface over TCP/IP can be extended seamlessly for wireless (Wi-Fi) as well. Keywords: JSP, Maintenance, RFID, Substation, TCP/IP
Highlights
Present day T and D business environment is facing immense pressure for the economic operation of substations
Due to various advantages of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, RFID solutions based on Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) with integration to Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS) are reported in the literature[4]
These solutions are architected around the standard RFID readers based on hand-held computers which are driven by high level operating systems and programming languages
Summary
Present day T and D business environment is facing immense pressure for the economic operation of substations. In order to circumvent the above drawbacks, on-line association with equipment and on-line data exchange between the equipment and computers where the optimization algorithms are executed is required Main advantages of such solutions for substations are:. The main objective of tagging the equipment with RFID is to track and record the information about each asset right from its commission stage to replacement which is basically its life cycle This enables utility to take appropriate and accurate decisions about each asset and to operate it effectively. Due to various advantages of RFID technology, RFID solutions based on Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) with integration to CMMS are reported in the literature[4] These solutions are architected around the standard RFID readers based on hand-held computers which are driven by high level operating systems and programming languages. In order to achieve the network efficiency and latency, communication is implemented using low level network programming in the RLU
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