Strong smart grid + ubiquitous power Internet of Things to enable Anhui power grid to operate efficiently

Polaris Transmission and Distribution Network News: In recent days, the electricity load of Anhui power grid has been operating at a high level. Since late July, the electricity load for the power grid in our province has been rising, setting new records many times. After the province's maximum load exceeded 40 million kilowatts on July 27, the maximum load on July 28 reached 42.37 million kilowatts, an increase of 8.22% year-on-year; daily electricity consumption reached 836 million kilowatt-hours, an increase of 5.74% year-on-year. The electricity loads in 15 prefecture-level cities all hit record highs, and the power grid load growth rate in Hefei, Chizhou, Lu'an, Anqing, Chuzhou, Xuancheng and other regions exceeded 10%.

The tight electricity consumption this summer is inseparable from the strong guarantee of a strong power grid and the hard work of front-line power workers. At the same time, the use of technological means such as robots, big data, and the Internet of Things also provides strong intellectual support for the efficient operation and maintenance of the power grid.

Accurate positioning and rapid emergency repairs, and build the strongest "brain" of the power grid with big data

On August 7, in the power supply service command center of Lu'an Power Supply Company, the atmosphere was tense and busy. The staff were closely following the computer screen. The large screen above their heads showed various power operation data. This is the "brain" of the operation of Lu'an Power Grid.

"Through the power distribution automation transformation, an automation terminal is installed on every power grid and every equipment, and staff can remotely monitor the operation of the distribution network in real time. Once a safety hazard or failure occurs, the detector can quickly locate the fault point, and the dispatcher promptly notify the operation and maintenance personnel to deal with it on site, and can arrive at the site for emergency repairs in as soon as half an hour." Jiang Rui, deputy director of the Operation and Maintenance Department of Lu'an Power Supply Company, introduced that as the first batch of cities in the province to implement a new generation of distribution automation systems, the current coverage rate of distribution automation in Lu'an City has reached 85%, and 86 major lines have achieved feeder automation.

"In the past, the equipment was unobservable and uncontrollable. When a line fails, it could only rely on manual inspection of the entire line one by one, which was time-consuming and labor-intensive. Now, through the intelligent distribution system, the load of each line can be monitored in real time, and the fault area can be determined in a timely and accurate manner when a fault occurs, and the best fault isolation and recovery plan is given to reduce the power outage area and deal with it quickly." Jiang Rui said.

At 11:30 am on August 3, Ms. Dai’s home in Rose Shencheng Community, Hefei City, had a power outage, and she immediately called the power supply emergency repair hotline. In less than 30 minutes, emergency repair personnel arrived at the site to carry out operations and power supply was restored at 12:14. It took less than 45 minutes to make the call to deliver the power.

Under continuous high temperature and heavy load, the reason why Hefei power grid can be repaired efficiently is inseparable from the help of big data. According to the person in charge of Hefei Power Schedule Control Center, through the construction of the power distribution automation system, big data has been penetrated into every "capillary" in the power grid. The power supply service command center can accurately locate heavy loads and equipment failures, quickly analyze and isolate fault points, and ensure that most areas of power users provide smooth power supply, shortening the processing process that took several hours in the past to several minutes. After the customer reported the repair, 16 grid emergency repair sites in Hefei city responded 24 hours a day, and staff from the nearest area could quickly arrive on site to carry out their operations within 20 minutes. According to statistics, during the extreme high temperature and heavy load this summer, the number of households in Hefei's power grid urban area fell by 14.46% month-on-month, and the service complaint work orders fell by 37.62% year-on-year.

In the "last mile" low-voltage distribution network, Hefei Power Supply Company fully implements the new model of "seizing with peace instead of grabbing". Through big data, the number of historical failures and power outages are analyzed to determine key guarantee areas. In their daily work, each emergency repair team uses high-tech inspection methods to promptly discover hidden dangers and simultaneously completes equipment defect removal and transformation. The reliability of urban power supply in Hefei has steadily increased to 99.948%, laying a solid foundation for safe power supply this summer.

Robot inspection and drone operations, "black technology" has become a good helper for operation and maintenance

In addition to the smart brain, the application of high-tech inspection methods such as drones and robots has also become a good helper for summer power operation and maintenance.

Liu Xiang is a substation operation and maintenance engineer at UHV Wuhu Station, mainly responsible for the daily operation and maintenance of power equipment. The UHV Wuhu substation where he is located is an important hub of the southern Anhui power grid, and it undertakes the important task of west-east power transmission, Anhui power transmission and surrounding power supply.

Liu Xiang told reporters that the substation covers an area of more than 200 acres, with a large number of equipment and complex lines, and the operation and inspection tasks are very heavy every summer. "In the past, daily operation and maintenance were completely man-made, and the two tasks of photometer copying and infrared temperature measurement were not easy. There were 542 meters in the station and multiple infrared temperature measurement points. It took two operation and inspection workers three or four hours to measure it in one round."

However, since a special "new colleague" came to the station, their work has become much easier. In 2017, Wuhu Station introduced a mobile inspection robot. He almost all the hard work such as meter reading and infrared temperature measurement were taken care of. Liu Xiang's daily work became much easier.

Recently, the reporter saw at the UHV Wuhu Station that this robot with two "big eyes" resembles the cute appearance of the Wali in the movie, but it is not vague to work. The staff told reporters that the two eyes of the robot are two cameras, one is a visible light camera and the other is an infrared camera, which mainly detects the heating condition of the equipment.

Liu Xiang joked that his robot colleagues worked hard and automatically inspected according to the set path every year. When they were out of power, they came back to charge themselves and had to work night shifts at night. "He has packed more than 400 meters in the station, and the infrared temperature measurement is fully included, and our workload has been reduced by nearly half. In addition to a small amount of time, we need to inspect on-site inspections, most of the time we only need to monitor images and data in the monitoring room to grasp the operation of the entire substation."

This summer, Chen Fei and his "little plane" are also busy. Chen Fei is a high-voltage line inspector of the Lu'an Power Supply Bureau. He is mainly responsible for the operation, maintenance and maintenance of 110 kV and 220 kV high-voltage lines in the city. Every time peak summer is coming, the hotter the weather is, the heavier their inspection tasks are. Fortunately, he now has a small helper - this is the drone equipped by the company. With its help, the line patrol work will be twice the result with half the effort. So every time I go out to work, Chen Fei has to bring a "small plane".

"In the past, some mountainous areas, rivers and other places that were not visible to the naked eye, had to climb up the pole tower to check closely. Live operations were not safe. Now all these tasks can be left to drones to complete." Chen Fei told reporters that manual patrols can only be patrolled from the ground, and drones can patrol from the air without dead corners. With drone assisted operations, inspection efficiency has been greatly improved. "Sometimes, it may take an hour or two to patrol a mountain in the mountains. Now, patrol with drones, and people can handle it in a few minutes at the foot of the mountain."

According to Hou Chuan, the specialist in power transmission of the Lu'an Power Supply Bureau, Lu'an has more than 3,000 kilometers of 110 kV high-voltage lines, and the line inspection personnel are equipped with 10 drones. These drones not only have automatic cruise function, but also can be equipped with infrared thermometers to realize fixed navigation inspection, which has truly become an effective auxiliary means of line inspection.

Data interconnection and visual control of equipment, accelerate the construction of the Internet of Things

As the first ultra-high voltage DC transmission line in our province, the ±1100 kV ultra-high voltage DC transmission project from Zhundong to southern Anhui is a key project for the east-west power transmission of West-to-East Power, and the voltage level and transmission capacity are both the best in the world. Since its inception, it has transmitted 3 million kilowatts of electricity to our province and played a huge supporting role in Anhui's fight against the scorching heat and high temperatures. Xuancheng Guquan Converter Station is the end point of this power artery and is also the most voltage-level converter station in the world.

"The ±1100 kV Guquan converter station is the highest voltage level in the world. There are as many as thousands of equipment, several times more than the 500 kV substation. So many equipment has generated massive data, and it is very stressful to rely solely on people to work." said Liu Zhikui, deputy station manager of Guquan converter station. In order to improve the level of power informatization and operation and maintenance efficiency, Guquan Converter Station actively promotes the construction of the power Internet of Things, establishes the first power 5G base station in the province, and achieves full coverage of 5G signals in the station, thereby realizing centralized management of experimental equipment big data and visual control of equipment.

As a demonstration project of power Internet of Things in our province, Guquan converter station has deployed intelligent perception terminals, built a large-capacity backbone transmission network and terminal access network, and established a three-dimensional visual panoramic interaction model to realize integrated monitoring, automated control, and intelligent decision-making within the site, creating holographic perception, panoramic vision, high-speed and reliable, intelligent and controllable, and comprehensively improves the level of intelligence.

After years of development, Anhui Power Grid has achieved leapfrog development, and the level of technical equipment and informationization have been greatly improved. Up to now, Anhui Power Grid has achieved lean management of more than 39.5 million primary and secondary equipment professionally in power transmission, substation, and distribution across the province; equipped with 118 drones of various types and 82 robots to achieve full coverage of automatic inspections of municipal companies; built an information-based emergency command platform and power supply service command platform to improve the rapid response and linkage handling capabilities for accidents; carried out the construction of distribution network automation system, completed pilot applications in Hefei, Lu'an and Huangshan areas, and improved the ability to find and deal with distribution network grounding faults; built a smart grid dispatching control system to support the integrated operation of dispatching and management services in provinces, prefectures and counties.

According to the State Grid Plan, the ubiquitous power Internet of Things will be initially built by 2021, basically achieving business collaboration and data integration, and initially realizing unified IoT management. Anhui Power Grid takes this goal to accelerate the construction of ubiquitous power Internet of Things, and aims to complete the coding and labeling work of Anhui Company's 100% 500kV or above power transmission and transformation equipment and 50% 220kV or below transmission and transformation equipment from 2020 to 2021. Comprehensively promote, implement and apply the "online power grid" to realize online operations. In the future, Anhui Power Grid will increase its efforts to build smart terminals, gradually expand the coverage of ubiquitous power Internet of Things terminal business, build an open and shared ubiquitous IoT management platform, and build an energy Internet ecosystem as soon as possible.