CIRED Workshop - Rome, 11-12 June 2014 Paper 0337 Paper No 0337 Page 1 / 5 LEVERAGING FAULT DETECTION AND VOLTAGE CONTROL IN LOW VOLTAGE GRIDS BASED ON DISTRIBUTED MONITORING Mário Serafim NUNES Carlos MOTA PINTO Alberto BERNARDO INOV / INESC ID – Portugal EDP Distribuição – Portugal Efacec – Portugal mario.nunes@inov.pt carlos.motapinto@edp.pt abernardo@efacec.com António GRILO Francisco MELO Nuno SILVA INESC ID / INOV – Portugal EDP Distribuição – Portugal Efacec – Portugal antonio.grilo@inov.pt francisco.melo@edp.pt nuno.silva@efacec.com Augusto CASACA INESC ID / INOV – Portugal augusto.casaca@inov.pt ABSTRACT Monitor BT project’s main goal is to develop and deploy advanced functionalities for fault management and voltage control on Low Voltage (LV) grids, potentiated by the information of distributed sensors. These operational parameters collected along the feeders by wireless meshed sensors enable fault detection and localization, fuse-blow detection in cabinets and secondary substations, leading to a reduction on the interruption time, improving Quality of Service (QoS). Furthermore, last-gasp alarms from sensors allow maintenance teams to react faster, supported by geo-referenced outage data provided by the Outage Management System (OMS). Monitoring LV feeders by deploying distributed sensors assures that the increasing micro-generation penetration is monitored, leveraging dynamic voltage control through the active management of Photovoltaic (PV) production by controlling their inverters with set- points calculated locally at the secondary substation. The developed equipment and functionalities will be integrated in a pilot grid area of EDP Distribuição (EDP Group), Portugal (Portuguese DSO), whose infrastructure will provide a realistic scenario for validation of the solution. INTRODUCTION This paper presents the initial results of the Monitor BT project (started in June 2013) that aims at researching innovative technologies to increase the monitoring and control of the LV level in distribution grids. Currently, in distribution grids, the LV level is still passive due to the lack of observability and control capabilities. Smart Grids envisage the deployment of more intelligent equipment and communication interfaces up to costumer’s level. Based on this trend, the project develops a set of advanced functionalities for the LV grid, including: i) LV fault detection and location, ii) detection of faults and faulty light bulbs in public lighting feeders and iii) dynamic control of the injected power by Photovoltaic (PV) micro-generators for voltage regulation. MONITOR BT OVERVIEW The Monitor BT is an R&D project supported by EU funds granted by QREN, the National (Portuguese) Strategic Reference Framework. Efacec Engenharia e Sistemas (Efacec) and Inesc Inovação (INOV) are the project co-promoters. The Portuguese Distribution System Operator (DSO) – EDP Distribuição (EDP) – plays the role of project associated partner, as EDP holds the field demonstrator to be deployed in the region of Batalha, in the centre of Portugal. One of the main goals is to demonstrate fault detection and location in LV grid segments, both at feeder and at public lighting level. Furthermore, it will also allow detecting and locating faulty bulbs in the LV public lighting segments. Besides this field demonstrator, there is another laboratory demonstrator for controlling the injected power by micro-generators. The reason for this lab proof of concept results from the practical impossibility of controlling micro-generators when installed in the LV grid, for two reasons. In one hand, one cannot interfere in existing installations; in another hand, the present Portuguese regulation does not allow controlling the injected power by micro-generators’ inverters, as those assets are supposed to inject as much active power as possible, provided that there is no voltage upper threshold violation. As a consequence, this trial will be carried out in a live lab, under a physical simulator of the LV grid, using real operational scenarios. These scenarios will reproduce real conditions of the LV segments in Batalha, as close as possible. The system to be developed and installed in the LV grid will be able to collect faulty data, concerning the monitored node voltages and line currents, as well as other measurements (power and power factor). These values will be then used at the live lab, so that real scenarios could be used for simulation and testing purposes. Figure 1 depicts the system architecture supporting both mentioned demonstrators.