Abstract:
|
To detect faults in their early stage in a substation, it is
necessary to monitor, measure and analyze periodically the
health condition of the electrical connectors, which are among
the most critical devices in such installations. To do so, the
electrical connector has to be combined with low-cost intelligent
electronic devices (IED), including different sensor types and
microcontrollers with wireless capabilities. Such an electrical
connector is referred as SmartConnector. Using the data
collected by the IED, it is possible to estimate accurately the
current condition of the electrical connector in real-time, which
in turn will determine the expected faults in the substation
before a major failure occurrence. The electrical resistance plays
a key role to determine the current health condition, and
therefore to estimate the remaining lifetime of the electrical
connector. The electrical resistance of a high-voltage substation
connector is calculated in real-time using different methods
proposed in this work, by using an analog-bipolar Hall effect
sensor and an instrumentation amplifier. Experimental results,
when compared with the standard 4-wire Kelvin method, show
an error of less than 10%. Although the proposed methods have
been validated for substation connectors, they can be applied to
many other types of hardware with electrical contacts. |