GE Digital Energy : Industry Solutions : Distribution Automation

Digital Energy	Protection & Control	Solutions as a Service	Industrial Communications	Monitoring & Diagnostics	Transformers & Capacitors	Power Sensing
Smart Metering	Substation Automation	Electric Vehicle Charging	Utility Operations Systems	Geospatial Systems	Power Delivery Projects	Power Quality

Advanced visualization technologies enable the efficient recovery of distribution systems utilizing fault isolation, sectionalization and power system restoration capacities within our wide range of distribution assets, controllers, and high accuracy measurement devices. Our high speed wireless capability provides peer-to-peer communications, enabling distribution utilities to make intelligent decisions, enabling fast and efficient responses to service interruptions.

Most distribution utilities around the world have a minimal or no monitoring on the main or lateral feeders. Early warning for over-current and earth fault detections as well as downstream faults and outages will improve information handling. Efficient fault detection will greatly enhance distribution grid reliability, reducing restoration time drastically from several hours to a few seconds or minutes.

Distribution reliability indices of CAIDI, SAIFI, SAIDI, etc. and service quality performances are thereby greatly enhanced. The figure below demonstrates how monitoring data on a distribution network can reduce the fault location time from 1 to 3 hours to just a couple of minutes. Monitoring enables the utility to save on lost man-hours as well as lost revenue, improving their performances, reliability and profitability.

A key driver and measurement of utility effectiveness is in the reliability of power to its customers. As many faults on overhead distribution lines are transient in nature, reclosing at the substation and installation of mid-line reclosers/switches can improve a utilities SAIDI reliability index by up to 24%. When permanent When permanent faults occur on overhead lines, having feeders with increasing degrees or automation can greatly enhance distribution grid reliability and reduce restoration of unfaulted segments from several hours to a few seconds or minutes. A key component of these automation schemes is intelligent controllers that can integrate with FDIR systems through sharing local information and accepting control commands.

Utilities face a difficult challenge having to dynamically balance the load scenario between customer demands and available generation capacity. Adding to the challenge is the ever changing consumption patterns due to factors such as day of the week, time of day, season, temperature and Power Factor from connected loads.

Maintaining an efficient and reliable distribution network is critical to a utility’s operation. Meeting this challenge requires voltage regulator controller and capacitor bank controllers working in unison.

These devices can operate as part of an integrated Volt/VAR Control (IVVC) scheme or as a Centralized Volt/VAR control (CVVC) system.

The IVVC or CVVC system works to achieve two key objectives:

Optimize Voltage - through ‘Conservation of Voltage’ that leads to reduced demand, that may result in decreased generation up to 6%.

Increased efficiency - through improved power factor and reduced VAR which helps to reduce power line losses.