The electric utility industry is moving toward a deregulated, competitive environment where utilities must have accurate information about system performance to minimize maintenance cost and meet customer expectations. Reliability of electric systems is gauged using several criteria adopted by the industry that, in general terms, measures the length and frequency of power outages.
Ground faults in underground cables are the most common cause of power outages in urban power distribution systems. Locating and isolating a ground fault, while restoring the healthy part of the network as quickly as possible, can significantly reduce outage costs and maintain the quality of supply and safety requirements. Therefore, automatic ground fault detection and localization represents a substantial part of the Smart Grid applications.

Ground fault monitoring

Electronic equipment tends to misoperate or reset following momentary interruptions, such as those occurring when transient faults are cleared. A ground fault recognition and management system should rely on units that are independent from line power supply. Infinite offers innovative solutions for ground fault management, based on the Aerinos BSC-50D battery powered RTUs combined with ground fault indicators. Line faults can be located in the first minute after occurrence. The fault detection units can be connected to SCADA via OPC Server or the MSG SCADA Gateway using any modern protocol. Specific alert messages can be directed to the maintenance personnel.
Furthermore, as an extension utilizing M2M functionality, SCOM-100 GSM Controllers can be used as alert SMS receivers at the control center. The SCOM-100 can be used to drive a mosaic mimic diagram indicating the substation alarm states visually with LED.
The deployment of Infinite’s solutions can significantly reduce the CAIDI and SAIDI reliability indicators.