European innovation tackles power cuts
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Date posted: 02/05/2010
Posted by: Site Administration
This story is from the category
 Sensors

Many European countries have just endured their coldest, most protracted winter in decades, and the importance of a secure and reliable energy supply has never been more evident. Additionally, bad weather can cause unprecedented surges in demand, especially at peak times, putting the electricity distribution industry under tremendous pressure to maintain supplies throughout the power network systems. When a fault occurs somewhere along the network thousands of people and businesses can be deprived of power.

The fault must be fixed as quickly as possible; to speed up the process, the electricity distribution industry is keen to move towards fully computerised and automated network management and control using modern Power Distribution Network Automation Systems (DINAS). The Slovenian and Serbian partners of EUREKA Project E! 3452 DINAS have advanced this aim significantly by developing a new generation of software and hardware tools capable of automatically locating and diagnosing a fault anywhere along a distribution network and rerouting the current to restore the power supply instantly.

"Power lines often run through remote or difficult territory such as mountains or forests, and engineers have to work methodically along the line until they locate the problem," says project manager Drago Končnik of Iskra Sistemi. "It's hard, time-consuming and very costly work. It's worst of all for consumers, though, who may be without power for up to several days in bad weather conditions, during the long and dark winter months".

What makes the DINAS system unique is that it automatically detects the fault in the current wherever it occurs in the power distribution network, isolates the faulty sector from the power line and restores power in a matter of seconds.

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