Seconds Feeder Restoration

One of the main goals of the Smart Grid is to improve system reliability. This can be accomplished by reconfiguring the switches/reclosers on a distribution feeder to quickly isolate the faulted section of the feeder and re-establish supply to as many customers as possible from alternate sources/feeders.

Feeder Reconfiguration solutions typically need to reconfigure the feeders within three (3) minutes. This may require communications bandwidth in excess of what is typically provided by AMI systems (5-8 kbps). A utility can enable feeder reconfiguration using a mix of high bandwidth radios, fiber optic connectivity or an AMI system based on WiMAX or BPL.

Many utilities want to use their existing switches/reclosers and associated controls as far as possible. Therefore, vendors must be capable of reviewing existing equipment, recommending upgrades and performing the upgrade work if required and integrating to as much legacy equipment as is reasonable.

Enterprise applications such as SCADA/DMS must be able to access status or feeder Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) as well as disable/enable automation functionality. The automation processors implemented for enabling automation will be used to manage connectivity of the feeder IEDs to the enterprise.

Many utilities require that operational and non-operational data from the feeder IEDs is made available to Engineering, System Planning and other defined groups within the utility, without traveling to the IED. To enable this functionality, the solution shall provide integration provisions for the required software tools that can be installed at the enterprise level to enable this functionality.

The feeder reconfiguration application may be represented as:

The Cooper Power Systems' feeder reconfiguration solution improves feeder reliability by re-configuring switches and/or reclosers to isolate the faulted portion of the system and restores the healthy feeders minimizing the impact to reliability metrics (SAIDI, SAIFI).

Controls with integrated communications:

• Feeder level switches/reclosers with Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) that can communicate using DNP 3.0 protocol.
• Communications integrated into the IEDs such as a radio/fiber board/BPL coupling or WiMAX coupling.
• Cooper Power Systems offers field services including communications surveys, field integration of communications, configuration, and integration and commissioning.

Yukon feeder reconfiguration:

• Automation software at a central location that receives data/polls data from IEDs and issues instructions/commands to the IEDs. The central location should be a secure automation processor located on the feeder, on the substation or at the control center.
• Yukon manages all automation functionality and can be integrated with existing SCADA/EMS applications. It is possible to provide SCADA/EMS with real-time status reporting and the ability to disable/enable automation.
• Ability to retrieve operational and non-operational data from the IEDs by remote polling from the enterprise level via the automation processor.