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，有可能大大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，例如生产线关闭，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（例如自然现象期间供暖系统或制冷装置的损失）。此外，我们的技术提供了一个丰富的基础，在电力系统保护领域的科学和技术进步，鉴于其多功能性和准确性的特点。所提出的故障定位技术适用于不同的研究领域，包括输电、配电、微电网以及架空线路和地下电缆的混合系统。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，例如用于状态监测、故障预测和预防性维护，所有关键方面，为用户提供可靠和持续的电力供应。这是我-Corps项目基于一种重建完整断层线并在时空平面上产生视觉上丰富的彩色地图的方法的开发。此彩色图不仅清楚地显示了故障位置，还显示了故障类型和严重性。进一步处理由该色图提供的综合数据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，并且鉴于其视觉功能，它不需要现有工具识别故障所需的时间。该技术依赖于以下几个方面的组合：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：沿线路沿着重建完整的故障状况，从而可以精确地定位其位置;以及速度：其可视化特征使得能够以低采样率非常快速地定位故障，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查进行评估，被认为值得支持的搜索.

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.