Distributed health monitoring system for control in Smart Grid network

Large scale blackout in power grids, while a rarity can be extremely harmful to the society. Propagation of faults in the power grid due to its connected nature has been studied extensively. Preventing any blackouts before they occur has been of great interest. To this end, a proactive health monitoring system is proposed that monitors various electrical parameters at the distribution level. These parameters are used to classify the system status into one of the four predefined states. The system takes into account electrical as well as non-electrical parameters to determine the system status. This information is used by a central unit to determine whether more data is needed, and/or any control action needs to be taken. While several Phasor Measurement Units (PMU) based state estimation techniques have been proposed in literature, most requiring extensive computational abilities at the individual nodes. Programmable system proposed in this paper, will operate at the distribution level of grid using small subset of available information in steady state and allowing for complete PMU analysis in case of any warning signs in the system. This novel idea can act as an intermediate system between already deployed Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and PMUs.