Smart Grid Foundation and associated Visualization facilities from a Transmission view point

摘要

This paper discusses the foundation requirements that will enable a smart grid to be deployed acrossrnSouth Africa to the benefit of all users in the Southern African power industry. Both power systemrncontrol staff and metropolitan staff are increasingly being forced to deal with and plan for the impactrnof environmental events on their portion of the power system, with no means of either visualizing or ofrnreasoning about these relationships.rnInternationally, the lack of situational awareness and the huge quantities of non-processed alarm datarndelivered to control rooms during disturbances have been blamed for recent blackouts around thernworld [4]. SCADA systems, by definition, only report historical facts and at best and show the state ofrnthe power system as it was 10 seconds ago. SCADA systems cannot and do not show what canrnhappen or what can go wrong either in the short or medium term. To-days energy managementrnsystems are equipped with tools that provide warnings of potential problems. However, the output ofrnthese tools is independent, isolated and normally only visible in tabular form [1].rnOne of the most unnoticed aspects of power system control SCADA systems is that they effectivelyrnring fence the monitored electrical data inside the control rooms. This means that unless a data sourcernis integrated with the rest of the substation/power station SCADA data, it cannot be effectively usedrnby the control staff in the control room. For example, if grass fires or lightning storms are notrnmonitored by the SCADA system, there is no way in which the control staff can see or predict therneffects of these events on the power system.rnCurrently no tools exist that are capable of combining SCADA, environmental and weather data on arncommon platform. Nor is there a way in which the combined inputs can be visualized in a singlerncomprehensive view that will allow all the different objects, associated with each data source, tornreason about the current conditions and notify the control staff of the potential problems.rnThe fundamental requirement of our Smart Grid design is the ability to combine the power systemrnnetwork state with multiple inputs on a common geographical platform. The non SCADA itemsrninclude environmental data, social activity, staff location, maintenance requirements and legalrnobligations such as permits, licences and authorizations. The data structure must provide a platformrnthat will allow objects to reason with each other and about the input data locally and provide warningsrnof potential risks and event threats to the power system to all users. By combining all these various data sources on an object oriented data base and deploying customisedrnapplications to monitor the relationships between the objects, users will have a 15 minute to one hourrnpredictive view of all threats and warning on the power systemrnThe paper discusses these items and defines the building blocks needed to create a country wide SmartrnGrid, starting from the individual customer right up to the transmission system. It examines thernoverall architecture requirements, the communications needs, local and remote data collection, objectrnmodelling, object reasoning and finally how the results are visualized.