I-Corps: Customer Discovery for Transmission Line Fault Location Technology

这个i-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发一种技术，有可能大幅减少停电后电力客户的停机时间和相关成本。这包括工业消费者的成本，如生产线关闭，以及住宅和商业消费者的财产/货物损坏或危及生命的情况(例如，在自然现象期间失去供暖系统或制冷装置)。此外，我们的技术具有通用性和准确性，为电力系统保护领域的科学技术进步提供了丰富的基础。所提出的故障定位技术适用于输电、配电、微电网以及架空线路和地下电缆混合系统等不同研究领域。此外，我们技术独特的可视化能力为其在故障定位和检测领域之外的应用铺平了道路，例如用于条件监测、故障预测和预防性维护，这些都是向用户可靠和持续输送电力的关键方面。这个I-Corps项目基于一种方法的开发，该方法重建完整的故障线并在时空平面上生成视觉丰富的色彩图。该颜色图不仅清楚地显示了故障位置，而且还显示了故障类型和严重程度。该色度表提供的综合数据被进一步处理，以获得非常准确的故障位置估计。与现有方法不同，我们的方法不限于某些类型的系统或故障条件，而且，鉴于其可视化能力，它不需要现有工具识别故障所需的时间量。该技术依赖于：通用性：适用于任何类型故障下的任何类型的传输系统；准确性：重建线路上的完整故障条件，从而精确定位其位置；以及速度：其可视化特征能够以低采样率非常快速地定位故障，这转化为低计算负担。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a technology with the potential to substantially reduce downtimes and associated costs to electricity customers following power outages. This includes the cost to industrial consumers, such as production lines shutting down, as well as property/goods damage or life-threatening conditions to residential and commercial consumers (e.g. loss of heating system or refrigeration unit during a natural phenomenon). In addition, our technology provides a rich ground for scientific and technological advancement in the field of power system protection given its versatility and accuracy features. The proposed fault location technology is applicable in different research areas including transmission, distribution, microgrids and hybrid systems for overhead lines and underground cables. Furthermore, the unique visualization capabilities of our technology pave the way for its utilization outside of the realm of fault location and detection, such as for conditioning monitoring, fault prediction, and preventive maintenance, all crucial aspects for reliable and continuous delivery of electricity to consumers.This I-Corps project is based on the development of a method that reconstructs the complete fault line and produces a visually rich colormap in the space-time plane. This colormap clearly illustrates not only the fault location, but also the fault type and severity. The comprehensive data provided by this colormap is further processed to obtain a very accurate fault location estimation. Unlike existing methods, our method is not restricted to certain types of systems or fault conditions and, given its visual capabilities, it does not require the amount of time needed by existing tools to identify a fault. The technology relies on the combination of: versatility: applicable to any type of transmission system under any type of fault; accuracy: the reconstruction of the complete fault condition along the line allows exact pinpointing its position; and speed: its visualization features enable very fast fault location with low sampling rate, which translates into low computational burden.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.